Opinions & Interviews

From ownership to experience: retail that distributes the future

On May 2, 2026, during his lectio magistralis in Parma, Brian Eno—the inventor of ambient music and a leading experimenter in artistic, sound, and light installations—introduced his two projects, SEED and My Light Years, presented in two locations in the city (the Monumental Complex of San Paolo and the Ospedale Vecchio), by explaining: my goal has always been to invent worlds in which people could feel good.

If we had to summarize what we have illustrated in these pages, outlining the current state of retail and imagining its role in distributing the future, we could repeat the same idea. The world of retail will be called upon to accompany people tangibly through their everyday lives, making those lives simpler while enriching them through a stimulating and beneficial presence.

For decades, psychologists and sociologists have told us that consumption no longer followed the rules of use and consumption, but those of fashion, style, and status. People did not buy what was useful in their everyday lives so much as what positioned them on a cultural scale of social prestige, exclusivity, and personal recognition. Communication was the primary engine driving this logic, while retail was regarded simply as its transmission belt.

Then Gen Z arrived and upended the system. Pragmatic and disenchanted, with limited resources regardless of social background, younger consumers mock the “distinction-seeking choices” of their parents and, more broadly, of the adult world, going straight to the heart of the matter.

What do I need a product for, and how can I get access to it without spending? Do I really need to own it, or can I simply use it for a limited period, gaining access to its functions rather than to ownership itself? The very logic of consumption has consequently changed, placing use value at the center along with the role of retail, which in some way bears the responsibility and the task of confirming – or disproving – the promises made by communication, increasingly at the mercy of algorithmic distortions.

It is the quality of the place and the physical presence of the seller that give reputation and legitimacy to the moment of purchase, and this will increasingly be the case in the future, fostering a consumption of experience in which usability will prevail over fashion and prestige and redefine conceptual and cultural priorities. A search for tangible and functional optimization, in terms of both products and services, will emerge after decades in which image and status have prevailed, along with, more recently, the influence of figures who had nothing to do with direct consumption experience.

Naturally, the experience of use incorporates the emotional, sensory, and affective dimension that always accompanies the purchase of a product, particularly when that product has a profound impact on the quality of everyday life. The consumption experience will therefore become “embodied” in the place of purchase, with all its distinctive characteristics, and distributed through physical spaces far more than through the metaverse of digital communication. As Vittorio Gallese explains in The Digital Self: From Mirror Neurons to Technological Mediation[1], the digital self of younger people is accustomed to becoming “embodied” through the consumption of experiences, in which the body becomes a living interface: for them, money is merely a control variable.

The other side of the coin is honesty and simplicity, which complement the pragmatism of younger generations. The complexity and chaos that geopolitics forces us to live with find a counterbalance in practices – often “tested” in retail spaces – that provide clarity and transparency. Familiarity with products that speak for themselves and prove to be companions in the situations of everyday life is sought out and appreciated. In this transition, the choices made by retailers become the very voice of those who buy their products: this helps explain the rapid growth of private labels compared with branded products.

Experience-based consumption centered on use implies a variety of services and mental flexibility on the part of those who engage with them: people can identify with polyglot offerings that do not segment consumers but can instead be “adopted and adapted” without losing their distinctive character. The moment of consumption – understood as movement and continuous passage through different territories – translates directly into a willingness to organize, optimize, promote, and experience everyday life as a journey of exploration through the retail landscape of touchpoints, which become catalysts of experience: in some cases, genuine “strange attractors” within an apparently chaotic system. What is “adopted” according to one’s expectations of personalization must then be “distributed” intelligently enough to “adapt” to the needs of ConsumAuthors as though it were a “tailor-made” product.

The consumption experience associated with a particular product, one with a strong identity and specific rituals, implies a before, an after, and a during. In other words, it entails a temporal framework that completes the experience itself and makes the use and consumption of the brand and product in people’s everyday lives memorable and shareable. Retail helps to “frame” the product in time, strengthening its presence within personal experience and defining the “experiential frame” within which it takes its place.