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Episode 653: The Anti-Store

Customers browse a Costco store.
Anjuli Ayer
/
Flickr
Customers browse a Costco store.

Note: This episode originally ran in 2015.

It used to be that if you ran a store, you wanted to make it easy for your customers. But Price Club and Costco went in the opposite direction: They made shopping harder. And people loved it.

Today on the show: How Costco and its imitators changed the way we shop. And how a new company is taking what Costco started to new extremes.

Music: "Heatwave." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or PocketCast.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Jacob Goldstein is an NPR correspondent and co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He is the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.
Robert Smith is a host for NPR's Planet Money where he tells stories about how the global economy is affecting our lives.