Apple Stores designed to be ‘cool places to hang out’

Newsweek reports that companies such as Apple, Sony and Samsung are designing their retail stores mainly to be “cool places to hang out” unlike other electronics sellers. “The goal is to get shoppers to buy into the notion that using these products makes them part of a unique community; actually buying the products comes later (the Samsung showroom is, in fact, just for show–you’ll have to go to an old-school electronics retailer to buy the products). Think of it as the real-world equivalent of an Internet chat room of like-minded techies.”