He never claimed it was a crime, just immoral, and I agree.

If the store provides you a valuable service, like allowing you to try on shoes or giving you significant advice on which product to buy, you should buy the product from them so that they get profits with which to cover the cost of providing that service.

Now, it depends how extensively you used their resources and how much of a markup they want. If you were in the store for something else and all you did is wander around to try to get ideas of what else you wanted, I don't think there's much obligation to buy. But if you're spending 15 minutes talking to a salesman about all of the possibilities (especially if you wanted to ask him the questions, as opposed to him seeing you in the area and approaching you to try to close the sale and upsell you) or extensively trying out the demo units, the store is providing you value and you're using resources that cost them money. As long as the additional markup that the store wants is fair (for an example of unfair markup see the guy who chose not to buy a $40 DVI-HDMI cable that costs <$3 on monoprice), you should compensate them for the value they provided you and buy from them.

Does it help to turn it around - you are paying a (probably marginally) higher price in the brick and mortar store in gratitude for the service (advice, time, hands-on experience with the gadget) they are providing. Nothing stolen, but fair compensation provided for information obtained.

> advice, time, hands-on experience with the gadget

Only if I can trust that the advice, time are all beneficial to me and not the store, which I can't, especially if I'm not dealing with a specialty store. More to the point, does the higher price justify the less then trustworthy advice provided?

If brick and mortar stores are only offering questionable advice and a hands on experience in exchange for the same product at a higher price then the online store with lower cost, then they have to compete with that. If they are providing real value, then they'll do fine.

The problem is, no one wants to pay for advice.

The assumption here is that this is just with online stores. Offline stores also compete as well, and not just using price, but real value-added services. If I got to store-x to learn about a product, an then end up purchasing at store-y because they provide greater value, am I doing wrong?

Well maybe the downvotes are for ignoring 2500 years of philosophical tradition - some ethical behaviour is universal

Let's apply the golden rule here: do you care if people waste your time?

And just for the sake of arguing, let's consider the use of the word theft could apply because if the staff is helping you, that takes up time they could be spending on paying customers.

Based on my morals I stand by the word choice. I agree that not everybody will agree that it is stealing, and it is certainly not against the lost but yes I believe that it is stealing from the company.

Here's why, the way I see it when a company hires an employee they are, as much as anything else, buying that person's time. When you think of it like this while the employee is on the clock the company owns their time. Stealing is to take something without the owners consent. The store owner consent to you using the employee's time, that is effectively the employer's time, with understanding that you are wanting to buy something at the risk of you changing your mind. This is the unspoken agreement. When you use the employee's time without any intention of buying something you are doing so outside of this unspoken agreement and that requires a different consent. If you walk in and say that you do not intend to buy something then the owner can decide whether to consent to your taking the employee's time, or then can decline.

tl;dr Stealing is taking without consent. When you talk to an employee you are taking them away from the company. Consent under false pretenses ins't consent.

In some countries, "wasting police time" is a criminal offence.