The wailing and crying over the supposed death of physical retail stores seems to have been raging forever, but really it’s a recent conversation and one that is way overhyped.

Obviously there is a relatively new retail player that lives inside the digital world and starting from a zero base only a decade or so ago has taken a lot of the conversation, but put into perspective Australians last year spent $265 billion in retail stores and only 13% of that was spent online.

I have never believed that physical retail would disappear and be replaced by a totally digital online space, it just doesn’t make sense and overlooks a fundamental need we have as human beings of wanting to go to the village square, meet people, gossip, catch up, be seen, eat and buy and this innate need isn’t going to be satisfied by a totally online experience.

We have however found great purpose in online shopping – convenience, global reach, 24/7 availability, research and of course price comparison and this is where our special guest Ben Lipschitz of newly launched Shopping Ninja came into our conversation joining 4BC’s Clare Blake and myself in studio.

Ben took us through this new Australian based price comparison website and app that once downloaded sits in the background of your search engine waiting for you to shop and when you do then does its own online research bringing you back what it believes are the best prices on your white goods, liqueur or other products you’re searching for.

This is part of new set of anticpatory online tools we are using that don’t require us to remember that they’re there nor do need to activate them, but rather after we’ve installed them and given them permission to ongoing search for us, it sits in the background until we need them and then pops up do its job before disappearing again.

We then moved on to look at the future of the retail and Clare reminded me of a working exhibition I curated and built in 2009 looking at the future of retail and what technology we might expect in 2020, here’s a video segment from Channel 10’s morning program.

I love looking back at these old pieces and the foresight thinking then and in this case am proud to say that I got it right and that there is still stuff we were able to prototype and build then, that is just starting to be seen now.

As always a great segment, wonderful listener questions, terrific guests and a really good chat, so listen now (20 minutes 09 seconds) and then let me know what you see in the Future of Retail.