This is the Question of the Week episode for this week, and the News Roundup episode should be up on Friday.

This week’s question is about whether the death of physical retail has been exaggerated, and ultimately what the state of physical retail is in a world where Amazon and e-commerce in general seems to be wreaking havoc. We talk through recent trends in retail, from the supposed apocalypse to those companies investing despite the downturn including Apple and T-Mobile. Aaron uses the jobs-to-be-done framework to talk through what people hire retail to do for them, and how physical retail might be able to hold its own against online retail. And we talk about the experimental nature of much of what’s being done in physical retail to stem the tide of e-commerce.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

• Article on Amazon’s book stores:
  http://www.retaildive.com/news/why-amazon-is-betting-big-on-brick-and-mortar/431499/
• Introduction to jobs-to-be-done theory:
  https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
• T-Mobile store expansion:
  http://fortune.com/2016/04/26/t-mobile-store-openings-iphone/
• New York Times piece on Amazon retail technology:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/technology/amazon-wants-to-crush-your-store-with-its-technology-might.html?_r=1
• Quartz piece on retail innovations:
  https://qz.com/956745/retail-experiments-from-farfetch-nike-and-amazon-offer-visions-of-the-store-of-the-future/
• Blog post on JTBD framework applied to retail:
  https://bhc3.com/2012/01/11/carving-up-the-retail-industry-by-customer-jobs-to-be-done/.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.