I recently had a (second) great experience where I was able to audition (reasonably expensive) gear in my own home/system for 10 days with no obligation to purchase and no cash or credit exchanging hands except that I paid one-way return shipping. In this case I ended up purchasing the piece and will receive a brand new one in the finish I want, after some customization I requested is completed. Excellent service and business model, IMO.
I haven't been in a B&M shop in over 5 years because I think it is disrespectful to shop the store and then buy from an on-line vendor or buy used. I have also had very good experiences purchasing direct from well-known boutique manufacturers.
Unfortunately, the B&M shop cannot compete with these models. I believe there is still a customer base for the B&M shop but, unfortunately, that base has been squeezed from one end by the Best Buy model, which now carries mid-level, main-line gear, and by folks like Music Direct and Audio Advisor, and at the other (higher level) end by savvy on-line retailers who are now offering in-home auditions, lower prices due to no middle mark-up, and generous buy and try policies with low cost, no hassle, return options. At the mid to upper high end level, excellent results and customer service can be had by dealing directly with boutique designers/manufacturers who are passionate about their products and about customer satisfaction.
I see B&M shops hanging in either as a "showroom" for businesses that do the majority of their sales on-line, or in major metropolitan areas where there are many customers with a lot of money and/or not a lot of time to mess around on-line so they want to be able to walk in, hear it, buy it, and enjoy it without a lot of research, trial and error, shipping back and forth, etc. I could be wrong but that is where I see things going.
