The most radical thing interactive systems could do is whet consumers’ appetites for … customized products and services … Let ordinary shoppers sift through the product information in databases. Give nontechnies access to electronic bulletin boards where people pool their knowledge by candidly discussing their experiences with products. Do that, and watch the mystery and cachet of smoke-and-mirror merchandising evaporate. Products get clearly differentiated by quality, price, and details of delivery, while selling becomes an auction
Predictor: Sherman, Stratford
Prediction, in context:The 1995 book “The Information Revolution,” edited by Donald Altschiller, carries a reprint of the April, 1994, Fortune Magazine article “Will the Information Superhighway be the Death of Retailing” by Stratford Sherman. Sherman examines the mixed effects of the online revolution on the retail industry. He writes: ”By offering open access to mind-boggling amounts of information from university libraries, government files, and millions of other users, the Internet has fostered an online community whose members enjoy sharing information freely. Surfers see such unrestricted traffic in ideas as a powerful force for social good; to some, it’s almost a religion. But you don’t need to be a fanatic to sense the essential strength of their point of view: a commitment to letting people choose what they want. That’s customer focus – precisely what’s required to make any kind of merchandising successful. Traditional retailers beware. The most radical thing interactive systems could do is whet consumers’ appetites for … customized products and services … Let ordinary shoppers sift through the product information in databases. Give nontechnies access to electronic bulletin boards where people pool their knowledge by candidly discussing their experiences with products. Do that, and watch the mystery and cachet of smoke-and-mirror merchandising evaporate. Products get clearly differentiated by quality, price, and details of delivery, while selling becomes an auction … The requirements for this Tommorrowland would be vast: a universal network linking homes and businesses to thousands of databases, technical standards enabling all the different computers to understand one another, interfaces that help ordinary users define their needs easily and precisely, and software that can find what users are seeking amid countless terabytes of computer files. All this would require much more computer processing and data transmission per transaction.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Shopping
Name of publication: The Information Revolution (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Will the Information Superhighway be the Death of Retailing?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 79, 80
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne