[ippisl]

Mail order catalogs never offered the opportunity to transcend the experience at a store.

Digital experiences do theoretically offer that possibility. One example is using virtual augmented reality to see how that shoe rack will look in you're home, how does it combines with your wall and floor colors, etc.

And this "digital better than real" has already started todat. Some high quality furniture retailers or hotels(forgot which) ,use computer generated models for their catalogs, not carpentry and photography.

[btilly]

I agree that web sites do more than mail order did. And can do more in the future. But the fundamental similarity is there in the convenient to buy / don't get to physically interact / slow to arrive vs having to go to a specific place / get to physically interact / walk out with the item you want minutes later.

Also I remember my mother taking out a catalog, putting the picture of the thing she wanted in the place she wanted it, then standing back to better imagine how its colors would fit in. That is a valuable feature that you can't get in a store. (Things do look different in different lighting.)

[ippisl]

1. convenient to buy - online will probably win , i think. From my personal perspective it's more convenient now for many products.

2. don't get to physically interact - most products don't need physical interaction , just visual one. And there's haptic feedback tech if needed.

3. slow to arrive - online is improving(1 day shipping, maybe better for a fee) and will be good enough for most cases.

And remember:store depend on volumes to pay the rent and keep the lights on. Once online takes enough market share from them, they'll might collapse under their own weight. Some even start to see this happening in financial statements of big retailers.

[bryanlarsen]

"Mail order catalogs never offered the opportunity to transcend the experience at a store."

Mail-order catalogs historically played a very important part in the life of rural Americans. You could even buy a house via mail order.

Even when it became possible to travel to a store easily, mail order catalogs still offered one thing that stores didn't: time.

You could spend hours, even days poring over your catalog, analyzing and obsessing. Every kid assembled his Christmas wish list from the Sears Christmas catalog, even urban kids.