Apple's retail pioneer doubts AI will take over shopping

While Silicon Valley spends billions trying to make AI agents shop on people’s behalf, Ron Johnson — who pioneered Apple’s retail stores — thinks the industry is overestimating how much of shopping people will hand over to machines, and that physical stores will keep thriving. Johnson, 66, joined Apple in 2000 to build its retail business as online shopping was taking off, and went on to help create a store network central to how Apple sells products and connects with customers. AI, he said, will improve the online shopping experience, but he doesn’t think it will change which way people shop.

That skepticism comes as major tech companies push AI deeper into shopping — Google with its Universal Commerce Protocol, designed to take consumers from product discovery to checkout, and OpenAI by turning ChatGPT into a shopping destination where users can research, compare, and sometimes buy without leaving the chatbot. Asked whether someone might let 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.” A laptop, he argued, is too personal to delegate — buyers want to feel its weight and see the display. AI may narrow the choices, he said, but it will never let someone physically experience a product; agents will mainly make shoppers better informed before they walk into a store.

That conviction traces to a decision Apple made more than two decades ago: its stores were designed not just to sell Macs, but as places to try products, learn how to use them, and return for help — a philosophy Johnson revisits in his new book, “Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius,” about building Apple’s retail operations alongside Steve Jobs. Competitors borrowed Apple’s glass-heavy design and versions of the Genius Bar, he said, but often missed the point: Apple’s employees, who aren’t paid on commission, were meant to find what a customer actually needed rather than push a sale.

After leaving Apple, Johnson took over J.C. Penney in 2011 to try to reinvent the struggling department-store chain, and was ousted less than two years later after sales plunged — a result, he now says, of applying a startup mentality to what needed to be a turnaround, changing too much too quickly without bringing employees and customers along. He later founded Enjoy Technology, an e-commerce company that brought tech products and setup services to customers’ homes; it filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and sold its assets to Asurion.

Despite his skepticism about how AI will reshape shopping, Johnson remains bullish on the technology itself, describing himself as an AI optimist. He believes Jobs would have embraced AI too — but as a complement to human judgment, not a substitute for it, recalling Jobs’ belief in bringing smart people together to debate problems.

Why it matters

Johnson’s skepticism, grounded in two decades building Apple’s retail model, runs directly counter to the agentic-commerce bets Google and OpenAI are making — a test of whether AI can substitute for the physical, human experience of buying higher-consideration products like laptops.