Celebrity E-Commerce Observers Reminisce About the Corner Store

NBC production trucks sit on the Harvard lawn, poised to link to orbiting satellites and transmit sight and sound into the digital ether. In a nearby classroom, camera and lighting wires have taken over the floor like so many snakes. Two NBC crewmen are on all fours, crawling, ready to pounce and stick a microphone into the hand of anyone in the audience who poses a question. A TV-studio glow washes over the room. MSNBC anchor Brian Williams works the crowd, then takes his place at the podium. The six members of his "Technology and Commerce" panel are miked, powdered, and ready to talk business to the world.
Yet there's something quite classic, premodern even, about the room. Rows of seats rise from an open center, like a Mayan ballfield, or the Coliseum in Rome.
The setting is a perfect, poetic match for the conclusion that the panel will reach: Yes, the Internet has created boundless opportunities. But even today's cutting-edge start-ups stand to learn a thing or two from the gas-lit corner stores of the turn of the century. There, when the door opened, a knowledgeable, courteous counterperson snapped to attention; someone who knew the customer by name, and knew what they'd be needing.
The corner store captures what many of today's start-ups need to succeed: skilled and conscientious people to run them and provide customers with a high quality of service. Businesses that thrive—virtual and terrestrial alike—are those that best serve and appeal to enduring consumer needs.
"If you're running chain drugstores where the help doesn't understand what's in the store, and you have to wait in a 12-person line to get your prescription filled, you're probably going to be vulnerable to the Internet," warns Wall Street Journal Technology Columnist Walt Mossberg. "But if you provide much better, human-centered pharmaceutical advice than the Web, then you'll be okay." This much won't change, he says: Consumers keep going back to the people and shops they trust.
Mossberg asserts that the Web's benefits for consumers have as much to do with competence and comfort as with price. He recently ran an experiment of posing sensitive questions to Drugstore.com and PlanetRx.com. "They gave much better answers," he says, "in a much more private way, than if you are in Walgreen's with 10,000 of your neighbors and you have to ask about some rash."
The Web wields the power of information, but at a cost. On Pets.com, for example, consumers can't cuddle a pup they're thinking about taking home. But they can learn all about care and feeding, immunizations, life expectancy, and the hottest treats and toys. Staff veterinarians, says Pets.com CEO Julie Wainwright, are constantly fielding calls from people who aren't getting the help they need any place else.