the retail experience endgame

I'm too lazy to research this (as always) but I recall in a previous blog I pontificated on the retail experience and retail architecture. I might have implied that it is heading towards some sort of design endgame. I need to modify that observation. We are all fully aware of the trend towards warehouse style stores and the great efficiency they create for suppliers. In conjunction with this, the internet shopping experience is displacing physical retailers, and driving a modest boom in the construction of
huge distribution centers that are invisible to the person sitting at a computer, credit card in hand.

After shopping in a BJ's yesterday, which is laid out in exactly the same way as every other BJ's, I realized that there is no architectural stopping point for the retail design. The retail model can never settle on a final form, because as soon as some company enters that delusional state where they believe they've got the consumer figured out, and their own supply chain is squeezed to the ultimate end of all possible efficiencies, then that is the precise moment that they go out of business. The next company is faced with the unenviable (unless you're the architect) task of recreating a brand and a shopping experience that recreates a customer base. The souk is forever, but the sellers and buyers will always change the color of their clothes and wares.