While Silicon Valley pours billions of dollars into developing sophisticated artificial intelligence agents designed to shop on behalf of consumers, the man who laid the groundwork for Apple’s iconic retail empire believes the technology industry is severely overestimating how much control people are actually willing to hand over to machines.
Ron Johnson, the 66-year-old retail veteran who helped build Apple’s retail business alongside Steve Jobs, argues that physical stores will continue to thrive in the face of rapid technological disruption. For Johnson, who has spent decades navigating the shifting paradigms of consumer commerce, skepticism toward sweeping predictions about the death of physical retail is nothing new. He joined Apple back in 2000 specifically to construct its brick-and-mortar retail business at a time when online shopping was just beginning its aggressive ascent. He went on to help forge a store network that ultimately transformed into the central hub for how Apple sells its hardware and interfaces directly with its customer base.
“AI is a new technology that will improve the online shopping experience,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “But I don’t know that it’s going to change which way we shop.”
Johnson’s perspective arrives at a moment when several of the world’s most powerful technology companies are accelerating efforts to push artificial intelligence deeper into the core of everyday commerce. This emerging paradigm, commonly referred to by industry analysts as "agentic commerce," relies on the bet that autonomous AI agents can seamlessly automate major components of how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase physical and digital items.
The push is already visible across major platforms. Google has been aggressively advancing this ecosystem through initiatives like its Universal Commerce Protocol, an architectural standard explicitly designed to assist AI agents in guiding consumers smoothly from initial product discovery all the way through to final checkout. Simultaneously, OpenAI has been steadily transforming its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, into a dedicated shopping destination where users can conduct product research, compare competing items across the web, and, in select scenarios, complete transactions without ever exiting the conversational interface.
However, when asked whether he could realistically envision a scenario where a modern consumer delegates an autonomous AI agent to independently choose and purchase an expensive item—such as a $1,000 or $2,000 laptop—without ever visiting a website or stepping foot inside a physical store, Johnson remained entirely unequivocal in his skepticism.
“Honestly, nobody’s going to do that,” he stated.
Purchasing a high-end laptop, Johnson argued, remains a deeply personal and sensory-driven transaction that buyers simply will not delegate entirely to an invisible software algorithm. Consumers making significant financial investments naturally want to feel the physical weight of the device, test the tactile response of the keyboard, examine the brightness and color accuracy of the display, and physically evaluate which screen size and form factor best suits their individual workflow. While AI tools will certainly prove useful in narrowing down a sprawling list of technical specifications, Johnson told TechCrunch that a large majority of consumers will still demand a direct, hands-on experience before parting with that level of capital.
“AI will never be able to have you physically experience a product,” Johnson emphasized. Instead of replacing the shopping trip entirely, he anticipates that autonomous agents will simply function as advanced research assistants, equipping buyers with deeper data and context before they ever cross the threshold of a brick-and-mortar storefront. “They’ll just become more informed shoppers when they come to the store.”
This conviction is deeply rooted in decisions that Apple made more than two decades ago when pioneering its retail strategy. Apple’s physical stores, Johnson noted, were deliberately engineered to serve a dual purpose: they were designed not merely as transactional spaces to sell Macintosh computers, but as immersive environments where everyday people could freely touch and test products, learn how to utilize complex software, and return for personalized human support whenever technical issues arose.
Many of these foundational retail philosophies are explored in depth within Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, Johnson’s newly published book detailing his experiences building Apple’s retail operations alongside Steve Jobs. According to Johnson, numerous retail competitors subsequently attempted to replicate Apple’s distinct aesthetic—adopting expansive glass-heavy architecture, minimalist open-floor layouts, and even customized variants of the iconic Genius Bar—yet they routinely missed the most critical element of the formula.
“The secret sauce for Apple has always been its people, the people in the store, and how they treat the customer,” Johnson said.
A core component of this strategy involved redefining compensation structures within the retail environment. Unlike traditional retail sales cultures where floor associates are routinely incentivized through direct sales commissions, Apple Store employees were intentionally kept off commission. The guiding philosophy behind this operational choice was to completely eliminate high-pressure sales tactics, allowing employees to focus instead on diagnosing what a customer actually needed, even if that meant recommending against a purchase.
Following his tenure at Apple, Johnson’s career took a dramatic turn in 2011 when he accepted the leadership role at J.C. Penney, stepping in with an ambitious, high-stakes mandate to completely reinvent the struggling legacy department-store chain. His tenure, however, was short-lived and turbulent. He was ousted from the company less than two years later after a radical overhaul triggered a steep and rapid plunge in sales.
Reflecting on that challenging chapter, Johnson candidly acknowledged that he attempted to alter too many operational elements too quickly, failing to bring both frontline employees and loyal customers along for the transition. He observed that Apple’s retail division had effectively functioned as a nimble startup that grew and evolved organically alongside the company’s expanding hardware ecosystem. J.C. Penney, by contrast, represented an entrenched corporate turnaround that demanded an entirely different strategic playbook.
“I applied a startup mentality to what needed to be a turnaround transformation,” he recalled.
Johnson later ventured back into the entrepreneurial startup landscape, founding Enjoy Technology, an innovative e-commerce venture that aimed to bridge the gap between digital ordering and physical service by dispatching technology products and personalized setup assistance directly to customers’ homes. Despite its creative premise, the startup struggled to achieve sustainable unit economics, ultimately filing for bankruptcy in 2022 and selling the vast majority of its core assets to Asurion.
Despite his reservations regarding how artificial intelligence will ultimately impact the mechanics of consumer shopping, Johnson maintains an enthusiastic outlook on the underlying technology itself. “I’m a real believer in AI. I’m an AI optimist,” he affirmed.
He believes that Steve Jobs, too, would have enthusiastically embraced the potential of artificial intelligence, though certainly not as a convenient substitute for human intuition and critical thought. Recalling Jobs’ unwavering philosophy regarding corporate innovation—which centered on bringing exceptionally smart people into a room together to rigorously debate complex problems and uncover entirely fresh perspectives—Johnson noted that technology has its limits.
“There’s no substitute for human intuition,” Johnson concluded.
