How has the Internet changed the behavior of consumers overall?
The biggest change is the fruit-fly phenomenon. The attention span is just getting so short now. It’s not just “Show me,” it’s “Show me in less than three seconds.” That has created new kinds of pressures. It’s partly driven by the retail experience online, but a lot of it has been driven by the media experience online. In a single page will be multiple thought streams. You go on a TV show now, and there will be a person interviewing another person, and below that … two stock tickers going at two different rates. There’s another thing above that giving sports scores. On the left hand at the top, there’s breaking news. Five, six, seven unrelated items on a page is now becoming standard for media consumption. I’m sure that it’s affecting brains. There’s gotta be cool brain research going on about this. So the media experience is changing how people view the shopping experience. The idea of careful looking, touching, spending time may be giving way to a desire to move quickly. You defin
