The man who built Apple’s stores doesn’t buy Silicon Valley’s bet on AI shopping
The man who built Apple’s stores doesn’t buy Silicon Valley’s bet on AI shopping
打造苹果零售店的男人，并不看好硅谷对“AI购物”的押注
While Silicon Valley is spending billions to make AI agents shop for us, the man who pioneered Apple’s retail stores thinks the industry is overestimating how much of shopping people will hand over to machines — and believes physical stores will continue to thrive. 尽管硅谷正投入数十亿美元开发能为我们购物的 AI 代理，但这位苹果零售店的开创者认为，业界高估了人们愿意将多少购物决策交给机器——他坚信实体店将继续蓬勃发展。
Ron Johnson, 66, has heard predictions about the demise of physical retail before. He joined Apple in 2000 to build its retail business as online shopping was beginning to take off, and went on to help create a store network that became central to how Apple sells its products and connects with customers. 66 岁的罗恩·约翰逊（Ron Johnson）此前就听过关于实体零售业消亡的预言。他在 2000 年加入苹果公司负责建立零售业务，当时在线购物正开始兴起。随后，他协助打造了一个零售网络，该网络成为了苹果销售产品和连接客户的核心。
“AI is a new technology that will improve the online shopping experience,” Johnson said in an interview. “But I don’t know that it’s going to change which way we shop.” “AI 是一项将改善在线购物体验的新技术，”约翰逊在接受采访时表示，“但我并不认为它会改变我们的购物方式。”
Johnson’s view comes as some of the world’s biggest tech companies are trying to push AI deeper into shopping, betting that agents can automate more of how we find and buy items — a concept commonly called agentic commerce. Google is making that push with its Universal Commerce Protocol, a standard designed to help AI agents take consumers from product discovery to checkout. OpenAI, meanwhile, is turning ChatGPT into a shopping destination where users can research, compare, and, in some cases, even buy products without leaving the chatbot. 约翰逊发表此番言论之际，全球一些最大的科技公司正试图将 AI 更深入地引入购物领域，押注 AI 代理能够自动化完成更多寻找和购买商品的过程——这一概念通常被称为“代理式商务”（agentic commerce）。谷歌正通过其“通用商务协议”（Universal Commerce Protocol）推动这一进程，该标准旨在帮助 AI 代理引导消费者从发现产品到完成结账。与此同时，OpenAI 正在将 ChatGPT 转变为一个购物目的地，用户无需离开聊天机器人即可进行研究、比较，在某些情况下甚至可以直接购买产品。
Asked whether he could imagine someone letting an agent choose and buy a $1,000 or $2,000 laptop without ever visiting a website or store, Johnson was unequivocal: “Honestly, nobody’s going to do that.” 当被问及是否能想象有人会让 AI 代理在不访问任何网站或实体店的情况下，直接选择并购买一台价值 1000 或 2000 美元的笔记本电脑时，约翰逊给出了明确的回答：“老实说，没人会那样做。”
Buying a laptop, he argued, is too personal a purchase to simply delegate to an AI agent. Buyers want to feel its weight, see the display and decide which size works for them. AI may narrow the choices, Johnson told TechCrunch. He added that many consumers would still want to experience the product themselves before spending that kind of money. 他认为，购买笔记本电脑是一项非常私人的消费，不能简单地委托给 AI 代理。买家想要感受它的重量、查看显示效果，并决定哪种尺寸适合自己。约翰逊告诉 TechCrunch，AI 或许能缩小选择范围，但他补充说，许多消费者在花费如此大额资金之前，仍然希望亲自体验产品。
“AI will never be able to have you physically experience a product,” Johnson said. Instead, he expects agents to better inform consumers before they walk into a store. “They’ll just become more informed shoppers when they come to the store.” “AI 永远无法让你获得产品的物理体验，”约翰逊说。相反，他预计 AI 代理能在消费者走进商店前提供更好的信息。“当他们来到店里时，他们会成为信息更充分的购物者。”
Johnson’s conviction stems from a decision Apple made more than two decades ago. Apple’s physical stores, he said, were designed not only as places to buy Macs, but also as places where people could try products, learn how to use them, and return for help when something went wrong. 约翰逊的坚定信念源于苹果二十多年前做出的一个决定。他说，苹果的实体店设计初衷不仅是购买 Mac 的场所，更是人们可以试用产品、学习如何使用，并在遇到问题时寻求帮助的地方。
Some of those bets are revisited in Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, Johnson’s new book about building Apple’s retail operations alongside Steve Jobs. Competitors, he said, borrowed Apple’s glass-heavy design, open layouts, and even versions of the Genius Bar, but often missed the people. “The secret sauce for Apple has always been its people, the people in the store, and how they treat the customer,” Johnson said. 约翰逊的新书《Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius》回顾了其中一些决策，书中讲述了他与史蒂夫·乔布斯共同建立苹果零售业务的经历。他说，竞争对手借鉴了苹果大量使用玻璃的设计、开放式布局，甚至模仿了“天才吧”（Genius Bar），但往往忽略了“人”的因素。“苹果的秘诀始终是它的人，即店里的员工，以及他们对待客户的方式，”约翰逊说。
Apple Store employees are not paid on commission, Johnson said, unlike the sales culture common across much of retail. The idea, he said, was to remove the pressure to sell and instead have employees figure out what a customer actually needed. 约翰逊指出，苹果零售店的员工没有佣金，这与零售业普遍存在的销售文化不同。他说，其理念是消除销售压力，转而让员工去弄清楚客户真正需要什么。
After leaving Apple, Johnson took over J.C. Penney in 2011 with an ambitious plan to reinvent the struggling department-store chain. He was ousted less than two years later after sales plunged. Johnson now says he tried to change too much, too quickly, without bringing employees and customers along. Apple’s stores had effectively been a startup that evolved alongside the company’s products. J.C. Penney, on the other hand, was a turnaround that required a different approach. “I applied a startup mentality to what needed to be a turnaround transformation,” he recalled. 离开苹果后，约翰逊于 2011 年接管了 J.C. Penney，并制定了重塑这家陷入困境的百货连锁店的宏伟计划。但在销售额暴跌后，他不到两年就被解雇了。约翰逊现在表示，他当时试图改变得太多、太快，却没有让员工和客户跟上节奏。苹果的零售店实际上是一个随着公司产品共同进化的初创项目，而 J.C. Penney 则是一个需要不同方法的转型项目。“我将初创公司的思维应用到了一个需要转型变革的项目上，”他回忆道。
Johnson later returned to the startup world, founding Enjoy Technology, an e-commerce company that brought technology products and setup services directly to customers’ homes. The startup filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and sold substantially all of its assets to Asurion. 后来，约翰逊重返初创圈，创立了电子商务公司 Enjoy Technology，将科技产品和安装服务直接送到客户家中。该公司于 2022 年申请破产，并将几乎所有资产出售给了 Asurion。
For all his skepticism about how AI will reshape shopping, Johnson remains bullish on the technology itself. “I’m a real believer in AI. I’m an AI optimist,” he said. He believes Jobs would have embraced AI, too, but not as a substitute for human judgment. “There’s no substitute for human intuition,” Johnson said, recalling Jobs’ belief in bringing smart people together to debate problems and find new ways of looking at them. 尽管对 AI 如何重塑购物持怀疑态度，但约翰逊仍然看好这项技术本身。“我是一个真正的 AI 信徒。我是一个 AI 乐观主义者，”他说。他相信乔布斯也会拥抱 AI，但不会将其视为人类判断力的替代品。“人类的直觉是无可替代的，”约翰逊说，他回忆起乔布斯坚信将聪明人聚在一起讨论问题并寻找新视角的重要性。