Marketing Everything, Everywhere

Decades ago—before eBay, the Home Shopping Network, and QVC joined our everyday lexicon—consumers actually shopped in stores. Nobody could even contemplate shopping for the holidays without weaving through endless lines of bumper-to-bumper traffic and squeezing inside crowded, overflowing shopping malls, just to spar with strangers over this year''s "must-have" Christmas gifts.

And then came Bob Ci...