You want it? You got it - instantly.

Stepping out for a morning muffin, you walk right into a temporary Target outlet that seems to have popped up through the sidewalk overnight to pitch its scaled-down inventory.

Back home, you begin to read Vogue magazine online and find a click-to-buy option for the products pictured in every ad, from a tube of lipstick to a Tiffany bracelet.

Call it 1,000 points of retail.

Just when consumers had grown accustomed to ambient advertising - the omnipresence of visual and aural marketing messages - they can now witness the rise of ambient sales.

In the run-up to the holiday sales blitz, experts say the gap between consumers' awareness of a product and their first opportunity to acquire it has narrowed to almost nil. Sometimes you still go get the goods; sometimes the goods come and get you.

But certainly shopping no longer means making a list, waiting until Saturday, and hunting down items using keyboard or car.

"Shoppers don't think that way anymore," says Wendy Leibmann, a principal at WSL Strategic Retail, a strategic marketing and retailing consultancy in New York. "It's [about] points of access for them," she says, and the freedom to shop in ways that suit them at any given moment.

"They're not confined to traditional formats," adds Ms. Leibmann. "They sashay back and forth among Web, big-box and specialty stores, catalogs - and in some ways expect retailers and manufacturers to do the same."

Consumers also are increasingly open to goods that arrive unbidden and whisper "buy me now," say experts. Sellers are rushing to intercept those sashaying shoppers and offer them a chance to make spontaneous buys.

Two-thirds of all purchases are unplanned, says Paco Underhill, a leading expert on shopper behavior and founder of Envirosell Inc., a consulting firm in New York. Marketers scrambling for a slice of that discretionary buying, he adds, naturally become more aggressive as competition widens.

Others agree. "The big breakthrough is that everything is for sale, and everything is always being sold at you," says Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide, an advertising and corporate-communications company.

In the newest form of the half-decade-old practice of guerrilla marketing, traditional retailers are trying out new temporary "pop-up" locations - tiny outlets that open and do business for a month or so before packing up and moving on - as they work to extend their brands and to leverage the relationships they have built with customers, experts say.

These pop-ups - still mainly an Eastern, urban phenomenon - can boost that familiarity by helping outlets appear more like community stores than faceless corporate brands. A recent study by Salzman's firm found consumers place growing importance on supporting local retailers.

These pop-up stores can include a measure of philanthropy. Target, for example, donated proceeds from its New York installation to breast-cancer research.

Temporary stores can also generate valuable buzz. "It's hit and run," says Mr. Underhill. "You can make the point that the store's going to disappear in six months, [so] get it while it's hot."

Shoppers value predictability when it comes to buying staples, Underhill says. Supermarkets don't benefit from moving the milk to another part of the store. But in appealing to shoppers' "discretionary instinct," he says, "change is often what gets people to look at stuff."

For sellers, stepping right into buyers' paths is also a defensive move. Although three-quarters of consumers reportedly now belong to some kind of loyalty program (such as retailer cards that offer discounts) shoppers show little long-term loyalty to retailers.

Consider the recent rise of product placement in television, film, even consumer magazine stories in which neutrality has traditionally been expected. Appearing ubiquitous earns products an easy familiarity that some experts say translates to sales. Ms. Salzman cites a quilt from the store Anthropologie that she saw recently in a catalog - and then in a TV series a day or so later.

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