A secondary problem is that even if you offer the best, most trustworthy customer experience possible, people will naturally discount it because they will have the feeling you're just trying to steer them to more expensive/higher margin/higher kickback purchases. Shops sometimes say "Non-commissioned salesperson" to try to diffuse that belief, but I'm skeptical.

I wonder if for major purchases, there'd be a market equivalent to the "independent fee-based investment advisor." Basically unbundle the service experience brick-and-mortar traditionally provided and let people buy it seperately. You'd pay a modest service charge up front and discuss with them what your needs are, and then they find you the right product and the cheapest/most reliable place to buy it. It comes with a service guarantee-- if you buy through their recommendation, they are responsible for negotiating warranty/service hassles.

I could see spending a $20 fee to know I completely slam-dunked a $500 purchase, especially if they can regularly yield outcomes like "Our huge network of merchant data found you the bike/appliance/etc. you wanted at some tiny brick-and-mortar in Baltimore and it comes out $50 cheaper delivered than any retailer you'd consider locally." Brick-and-mortar retailers don't have to try to maintain an expensive sales and customer-service experience and convert to rack-em-high-sell-em-cheap warehouses, and no-service-required customers can skip the consultancy and go directly to them and still get a decent price.

They "advisor" service would have to be explicitly independent and no-kickbacks for this to work... so I suspect what would happen is that it would build trust for a few years, then start undermining it by taking incentives to steer business.