• The New York Times, Monday, March 19, 2007 11:30 AM

The era of Experience Shopping is upon us. Samsung recently leased 10,000 feet of astoundingly expensive real estate in midtown Manhattan, inviting customers to commune with its products but refusing to sell them anything. And last week, AT&T said it would open 11 experience stores across the country--but sell products--joining Motorola, Apple, Sony, Maytag and Verizon, which have all opened such outlets over the past several years.

Companies like Best Buy, Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target have achieved a level of dominance in the economy that earlier stores could hardly fathom. But they did something else: They took the romance--and arguably the magic--out of American retailing.

The new stores are designed to put a piece of merchandise into customers' hands and teach them how to use it. The assumption is that after all the touching and feeling, customers will be willing to spend more. Samsung says that 31% of those who visited its experience store within a year bought its brand of an HD television set.

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