URI Prof. Ruby Roy Dholakia looks at the future of shopping.

The Providence Journal

As the future unfolds, expect the battle between brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers to continue. The ultimate winner will be the consumer, who can expect new shopping experiences.

So predicts Ruby Roy Dholakia, professor of marketing and electronic commerce at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business Administration.

Start with online, where someday you may meet Virtual Jane, the cyber version of that likable salesperson you encounter today in an actual store.

“When I go clothes shopping,” Dholakia says, “it’s not just that I like to look at the colors, the fashions, the styles –– I also like to converse with the salesperson and seek her advice and things like that.” It’s part of the pleasure of shopping, what’s known in Dholakia’s field as the “hedonic” experience some seek when buying.

“The electronic stores are saying: how can I offer that? How can I make it interactive?”

Some sites today offer live chats with customer representatives, but these real if distant people change day by day and are mostly faceless. Virtual Jane would have a face. You would see her on your screen –– and she would see you, through the camera on your computer or mobile device.

But Jane, like her brick-and-mortar counterpart, would do more than look and talk.

“Why do you want to go back to the same person in the store?” Dholakia says. “It’s because they know you. It’s encoded in their memory.”

Virtual Jane (or Joe) would have memory of you, too –– a digital profile created from data collected during previous shopping and interactions, and stored on a chip on a server somewhere out there. With face-recognition technology, Jane would be able to identify you when you signed on –– you would be, after all, not just anyone. She might even ask how the weather is, there in that (real-life) community where you live.

Looking beyond Virtual Jane and Joe, whose advent is not too distant, Dholakia imagines technology that would add to the two senses that now comprise the online shopping experience: sight and sound. Touch –– often important to a shopper, think: buying towels or sheets –– could be coming to your screen.

“They would have this sort of virtual hand, like a glove, that you could manipulate. The hand would come up on the screen and you could touch it and it would signal to you,” Dholakia says. “I’m sure they will map out the sense of touch and say, ‘OK, this triggers softness, this triggers roughness, this triggers whatever.’ ”

Smell could also be in the (more-distant) online future, too, Dholakia says.

But as sophisticated as the online shopping experience may become, Dholakia says, it will never completely replace the traditional store.

“I do not see brick-and-mortar totally going away –– ever,” she says.

She notes that not even online retail giant amazon.com or online grocer Peapod can deliver a product immediately. And sometimes, immediacy is paramount.

“There are lots of occasions, what we call ‘situational reasons,’ when you cannot plan ahead so much to do the shopping and then wait for the delivery –– the classic case of running out of milk or running out of bread. Even if Peapod delivers and delivers conveniently, it still requires some level of planning. It’s always faster to just go pick up.”

As traditional retailing competes with its virtual relative, Dholakia says, businesses will have to do more than satisfy immediate need. She envisions more entertainment options at malls –– going beyond food courts and cineplexes to video gaming on larger screens that a shopper would have at home.

“Eventually, they’ll have to find tenants who can make money from that entertainment. I don’t know what that will be but I think they will have to offer that.”

And traditional retailers, the professor says, will benefit from shifting demographics –– and the fact that no online site can surpass the pleasures available in a store, at least in the foreseeable future.

“We are an aging society,” Dholakia says. “When you retire, you have more time on your hands.” What she calls “time-poor” shoppers –– working people who like the speed of online buying –– will no longer be under the gun when they no longer have to punch a clock. They will have time to stop and smell the roses, literally.

“Shopping is still a pretty cheap and hedonic experience –– you like all the sensual gratifications you get. Look at what a grocery store has become. Even if I don’t need flowers, I like to take my cart by the flowers because I like to look at the flowers. There are all these sights, sounds. Everything is there.”

More on Dholakia and her research is at http://www.cba.uri.edu/faculty/inbrief/rdholakia/

gwmiller@projo.com