As Marshall McLuhan once said, "The medium is the message." To take it one step further, the equipment used to create the medium is the message.

Witness Internet-based retail and auction sites, where professional video and audio equipment is often the message — and the message is for sale. The proliferation of these sites is changing the way professionals acquire equipment. At the same time, these sites are changing the brick-and-mortar retail model, which has been the norm until now. But are these changes for the better?

"It's just another way [of buying equipment]," says Ray Maxwell, who was recently named general manager of Digibid.com, a two-year-old, online, pro-audio equipment auction site. Like many involved in this rapidly expanding niche, Maxwell is quick to point out that online ventures are not intended to replace brick-and-mortar retailers. Instead, he says online sites complement traditional retail operations.

James B. Kersten, CEO of Iowa-based Musichotbid.com, echoes that sentiment in the FAQ section of his company's website. "We will help retail outlets by providing them another way to reach the public. Perhaps the greatest benefit is the fact that we can offer them a variety of ways to reach the public: auctions, store front, or classifieds ads, at a comparatively low cost to going into e-commerce themselves."

But some aren't buying it, like Henry Posner, for example. As director of sales and training at B&H Photo, which has made a substantial investment in bricks and mortar at its recently renovated 35,000-square-foot retail showroom in New York City, Posner is on the other side of the equation. He says he is skeptical of what e-commerce can provide to professionals who need expert advice as much as they need competitive pricing. "When someone walks in here for a camera to shoot a wedding next week, he'll be talking to one of our salespeople who shoots three weddings a week using that camera," Posner says. "That's not something that our website — or anyone else's — can do."

Nevertheless, B&H has maintained a website for some time as an adjunct to its store-front operations. Recently, the site was upgraded to allow completely Internet-based transactions, and it will soon be upgraded further to allow B&H to collect "cookies" — data about site visitors for future use.

Next: Another way