Imagine for a moment two stores side by side. Store number one is filled with every product imaginable. Store number two offers the same goods but with no physical inventory on hand. Shoppers can browse but must make their purchases online.

Traditional thinking would suggest that today’s consumers would purchase more from store number one, that it’s better equipped to meet their needs. David Bell, Xinmei Zhang and Yongge Dai Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, believes otherwise.

In a recent session at Shoptalk, Professor Bell discussed the growing trend toward “zero-inventory stores,” the idea of “supercharging” customers offline and why physical stores aren’t going anywhere.