I love buying things off of Amazon, but almost always -- out of a dumb sort of courtesy -- I will buy a product that I became interested in from seeing it at the store. Brick and mortar has its own inherent expenses, and I can see why such stores would get annoyed when shoppers take the best from both worlds: being able to touch and test a product in the flesh and the cheaper prices of an online retailer.

In what ways can a brick-and-mortar store improve their business model to compete with this? Providing excellent customer service and expertise won't do anything to address the problem (as I can always suck up a salesperson's time and then go home and buy the product).

On the other hand, Apple stores have this exact same problem...even more so because a) their markup is even higher than electronic retail and b) the literally allow you to see how much more expensive their prices are compared to online listings, right from their own demo computers.

I don't buy much from the Apple stores but when I do, I feel even more compelled to continue my dumb-courtesy and pay the extra $10-$20 in-store. But I don't how extendable the Apple magic is to every kind of retailer