AI will change how consumers shop, but it will not change where they shop, according to Ron Johnson, Apple's former head of retail and the creator of the Genius Bar.

"AI is another new technology that will change how we shop, but it will not change where we shop," Johnson told Retail Brew. "We will always rely on a combination of physical stores and other buying experiences."

Johnson built the blueprint for Apple's physical stores starting in 2000. Twenty-five years later, Apple operates nearly 270 stores in the US and more than 500 globally, and retailers widely emulate their customer experience. His book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius, arrives September 22 and details the lessons he learned while creating Apple Stores.

Johnson draws a direct parallel between the arrival of AI and the rise of online shopping, which skeptics once predicted would kill physical retail. "When I had the chance to create the Apple stores back in 2000, there was a big technology that people said would eliminate stores. That was called online shopping, and the reality is online shopping created the rebirth of physical stores," he said. "Physical stores have perhaps never been more important in their history than they are today."

He expects AI to improve both the physical and digital shopping experiences without shifting customers from one channel to the other. Earlier technologies, by contrast, did displace their predecessors: television shopping and mail order catalogs largely got replaced by online shopping, he noted.

A store for everyone

The defining decision of Apple's early-2000s in-store strategy ran against the retail grain of the era. While specialty stores narrowed their target audiences, Apple went after everybody. "No. 1, we're going to create a store for everyone," Johnson said. That decision pushed Apple into high-traffic locations like shopping malls, a first for technology products, which consumers purchase infrequently.

Apple also built its stores around experience rather than transaction. "We knew that heading into an age when there would be online stores, online would be great at a transaction. The one thing online couldn't do back in 2000 was deliver an experience," Johnson said.

That experience included Genius Bars for tech support, theaters for presentations, 1:1 training classes, summer camps for kids, and open access to product trial. "These are things you can't do online," he said. "But, more importantly, you could try the product." Even today, he argued, an online agent-supported shopping experience cannot match the physical experience of a store.

The demanding shopper

Today's retail shopper is more knowledgeable and has more access to information than ever, Johnson said, and retailers face a constantly rising bar. "Over time, retail experiences have improved dramatically, but the new bar is the last shopping experience you had."

He contrasted current capabilities with conditions at the Apple Store's launch 25 years ago. Back then, an out-of-stock item meant the store had no systems to locate it elsewhere, no online store for ordering with next-day in-store pickup. "All these new tools have come that have made shopping a better experience, both online and in the store," he said.

Rebuilding the store today

If Johnson created the Apple Store experience today, he would keep the size, design, and staffing the same. The change would come through opt-in personalization powered by AI. "I would love to have a customer walk in the store and have every employee naturally know how they use their Apple products," he said.

He described an alert system that would notify employees when a returning customer enters: "Wouldn't it be great if, when a customer walked in the store, I had interacted with that customer before, I got an alert on my phone that said, 'Ron's back,' then you start to build a family among customers?"

The goal, in Johnson's view, is using technology to strengthen the human connection between employee and customer, enabling better product recommendations based on how each customer actually uses their devices.