While Silicon Valley is spending billions of dollars to let AI agents do the shopping, the Apple retail pioneer believes the industry has overestimated how much shopping will be handed over to machines by humans and believes brick-and-mortar stores will continue to thrive.
Ron Johnson, 66, has heard predictions about the demise of brick-and-mortar stores before. He joined Apple to build its retail business in 2000, just as online shopping was taking off, and later helped build the store network that became central to how Apple sells its products and connects with customers.
“AI is a new technology that will improve the online shopping experience,” Johnson said in an interview. “But I don’t know if it will change the way we shop.”
Johnson’s views come as some of the world’s biggest technology companies push AI further into shopping, betting on the ability to further automate how agents find and buy products, a concept commonly referred to as agent commerce. Google is making that push with its Universal Commerce Protocol, a standard designed to help AI agents guide consumers from product discovery to checkout. Meanwhile, OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a shopping destination where users can research, compare, and even buy products without leaving the chatbot.
When asked if he could imagine someone having an agent choose and buy a $1,000 or $2,000 laptop without ever visiting a website or a store, Johnson answered flatly: “Honestly, no one would do that.”
He argued that buying a laptop is too personal a purchase to simply leave it to an AI agent. Buyers want to feel the weight, see the display, and decide which size is right for them. AI could narrow options, Johnson told TechCrunch. He added that many consumers want to experience the product for themselves before spending that kind of money.
“With AI, you can never physically experience the product,” Johnson says. Instead, he expects agents to better inform consumers before they enter the store. “They’re going to be more informed shoppers when they come into the store.”
Johnson’s conviction stems from a decision Apple made more than 20 years ago. He said Apple’s brick-and-mortar stores are designed not only as places to buy Macs, but also as places where people can try out products, learn how to use them, and return to for help if something goes wrong.
Some of those bets are revisited in Mr. Johnson’s new book, “Shop Different: How Revealed Apple’s Genius,” about building Apple’s retail business with Steve Jobs. He said competitors borrowed from Apple’s glass-heavy designs, open layouts, and even versions of the Genius Bar, but often missed the mark.
“For Apple, the secret has always been how we treat our employees, the people in our stores, and the way we treat our customers,” Johnson said.
Unlike the sales culture common at many retail stores, Apple Store employees are not paid commissions, Johnson said. The idea, he said, was to take away the pressure to sell and instead have employees understand what customers actually need.
After leaving Apple, Mr. Johnson took over J.C. Penney in 2011 with an ambitious plan to reinvent the struggling department store chain. He was fired after less than two years as sales plummeted.
Johnson now says he tried to change too much, too quickly, without bringing his employees or customers along. Apple’s store was effectively a startup that evolved along with the company’s products. Meanwhile, J.C. Penney has made a shift that requires a different approach.
“I applied a startup mentality to things that needed turnaround change,” he recalls.
Johnson then returned to the startup world and founded Enjoy Technology, an e-commerce company that delivers technology products and setup services directly to customers’ homes. The startup filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and sold virtually all of its assets to Asurion.
While Johnson is skeptical about how AI will reshape shopping, he remains bullish about the technology itself. “I truly believe in AI. I’m an AI optimist,” he said.
He believes Jobs would have accepted AI, but not as a replacement for human judgment. “There’s no substitute for human intuition,” Johnson said, recalling Jobs’ belief in bringing smart people together to discuss problems and find new ways to look at them.
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