I would prefer to be able to walk into a store and try things out vs shipping things around. I've gone so far as to wait to buy something from Sweetwater until I was in the area and I could actually pick it up and try it.
Yeah...there's a lot of people that feel that way, especially about guitars. I've done that too...spent hours in the store trying out several, finally picking one.
I'm not sure that it made all that much difference...because when I look back, all the guitars that I ever bought "in person" in a store, I no longer have, except one.
Meanwhile all the guitars I've bought online, I still have, and the only ones I've sold off was when I needed to thin out the heard.
In the last 2-3 years...I bought 6 Fender Tele's online...love every one of them....and that's really my point, that of the guitars I bought online, there was never any that I had to return as soon as I got them because there was something wrong or I hated the way they played.
Actually...there was one...an Epi bass I bought from MF, because when it arrived it had a finish crack (it was shipped during the dead of winter)...and I returned it and they swapped it.
The way I look at it...each guitar comes with it's personality, and you accept it for that...for it's individual feel, sound, etc.
If you have a very specific things in mind up front, and you're looking for a guitar that fits all those things perfectly, then you probably need to shop in person...but I think that sometimes when you are in a store, you end up buying from what they have in stock. So you're limited in some ways. Shopping online allows me to wait until I find exactly what I want, and often if it's not at one retailer, I can find it at another.
I went almost 100% online shopping long before the virus came along. I'm sure for some people out there, the need for online shopping due to the virus, might be uncomfortable...but even before the virus, I realized that killing a couple of hours to drive somewhere was more uncomfortable...when I can just buy it online and have it delivered...
I've bought like 90% of my audio/music gear online over the last 20+ years.
What's kinda funny...these last several months, after they started taxing on internet purchasers no matter what state you bought it from...I turned to some local Craigslist purchasing for a bunch of stuff...and so I've had to go meet-n-greet and pickup the items...even during the lockdowns...but these were all larger items that would be too difficult to ship anyway, so much easier to go local and get them with my SUV...but technically, you could still call it an online buy.