Assembly Required.

The case for putting people back into the product.

To revive their brand, Barnes & Noble did something deceptively simple: They stopped treating their stores like interchangeable boxes and started treating each one like an independent bookstore. Local teams were given agency to decide how books were displayed, how sections were organized, and how the store reflected their community.

In other words, they stopped optimizing for uniformity and started optimizing for people.

When asked how they planned to compete with Amazon, the new Barnes and Noble CEO said something even more interesting. You can buy the same book on Amazon, he explained. But when you buy it from a bookstore, it feels like a better book. The experience of reading it is more pleasurable.

It’s not because the paper is different or the ink is better. It’s the context around the purchase. The conversation with someone who actually cares about books. The handwritten recommendation card. The sense that this book passed through human hands before it reached yours.

What Barnes & Noble rediscovered isn’t about retail. It’s about emotion. What we choose to buy, and who we choose to buy it from, are emotional decisions long before they’re rational ones.

If products are easier than ever to copy, then experience is the advantage. Here’s how marketers across industries can apply this thinking:

• Give frontline teams more agency.
  The people closest to customers see friction first. Empower them to shape experiences that feel local, relevant, and real, without waiting for a brand committee to approve everything.
• Design for feeling, not just function.
  Features explain what a product does. Experience defines what it feels like to choose the product. Audit your customer journey and ask: Where does this feel human? And where does it feel like a system?
• Put faces back into the brand.
  People trust people. Highlight employees, experts, creators, or partners who genuinely care about the product and the customer. If everything sounds like it came from "Brand X," you’re missing an opportunity to connect.
• Resist the urge to over-standardize.
  Consistency matters, but sameness kills character. Allow variation where it improves relevance and connection.
• Measure what people remember, not just what they click.
  Optimization metrics matter, but loyalty is built in moments that don’t always show up in dashboards. Pair performance data with qualitative signals: feedback, conversations, repeat behavior, and advocacy.

Just like that book, customers can buy the same product somewhere else. The pricing and features might match. But it feels different when it comes from people who care.

The winning brands in 2026 will be the ones that create connection at the human level, where customers feel seen and understood.

You can automate efficiency. You can’t automate care.

And people can tell the difference.