For decades now, certain shops don't just sell stuff, they sell the “experience” of shopping there. I'd like to have what their PR departments are smoking.
It's _all_ experience. "Don't sell the sausage, sell the sizzle".
This is why car adverts are either belting round implausibly empty urban streets, or of Wankpanzers off-roading in a way almost no owner will actually do. "Buy this and this is the experience you're connecting with".
I'm rather confused by the article's point. It really reinforces that it's all experience, and really, material goods are just a means to an end.
Look - if I want to go experience Bali, it's not like I have to buy an aeroplane to do so. We _vastly_ overestimate the marginal utility of a more expensive car or some slightly different shoes in the sense of what additional experiences it's going to give us.
And, frankly, if you're claiming your shoe purchases increase your wellbeing because they don't hurt then I might suggest you pay more attention to purchasing the correct size for your feet (Stop buying from the Dolmansaxlil shoe corporation).
ISTR that materialistic humans being on a hedonic treadmill has quite a lot of evidence.
I'm not sure what you're pointing at, but all shops are selling a shopping experience.
Compare a hard discount grocery store to a regular supermarket, and we see the supermarket invisting significant money (and increasing prices) to improve the customer experience, and many customers willing to pay the price to not shop in what looks like a warehouse, even if they'd buy roughly the same products.
