Business Week just posted an article on Best Buy’s business strategy. I am interested in hearing comments on what people think about Business Week’s take on the article. The article is posted at the following link, http://tinyurl.com/yaokons. I have also posted it below.
Why Tech Bows to Best Buy
As the last major electronics retailer standing, the chain has unparalleled clout. And CEO Brian Dunn means to use it, shaping technologies and helping to develop products
By Cliff Edwards
For the past four years, employees at Best Buy (BBY) have taken regular tours of what the company called its “retail hospital.” A group of about a dozen would don white lab coats, walk a row of real hospital beds, and scan charts describing the maladies afflicting each of the giant retailer’s major competitors. But this fall, Best Buy staffers made their last trip to the darkened room on the company’s Richfield (Minn.) campus. The retail hospital is closing because all of Best Buy’s major rivals have succumbed to terminal illness. “It’s kind of like ultimate fighting,” says Barry Judge, the company’s chief marketing officer. “One retailer goes down, and then who’s next?”
At least for now, Best Buy stands as uncontested champ. It’s the last major consumer electronics retailer in the country this holiday season, after the liquidation of Circuit City earlier this year. But Brian J. Dunn, who became Best Buy’s chief executive officer in June, isn’t taking success for granted, especially with rising competition from nontraditional rivals such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Amazon.com (AMZN). So Dunn has ambitious plans to take advantage of Best Buy’s newfound clout: He wants to go beyond the typical big-box retailer role of selling commodity products such as televisions and personal computers and become a central player in determining which products come to market and how big-spending customers choose the latest gear.
The plan is already under way. Rather than waiting for electronics makers to ship Best Buy the same products that its rivals get, Dunn’s lieutenants are walking factory floors with executives from companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Toshiba, influencing product development and design. The retailer is pushing suppliers to use standardized software and digital services so consumers can listen to music or watch movies on any device. And Best Buy has set up its own venture capital fund to pour millions of dollars into startups from Silicon Valley to Asia. The goal is to shape development of new technologies in promising fields such as green vehicles, digital health, and home monitoring. “We are talking to players deep into engineering the future,” says Dunn. “It leads us nicely to a space where we can make a real difference to consumers.”
“AVANTE GARDE”
Shoppers wandering Best Buy aisles this holiday season will see the difference. Along with the latest flat-screen TVs, digital camcorders, and computer games, the company’s shelves are stocked with exclusive items. Among them: the thinnest laptop on the market, a motorcycle that runs solely on electricity, and a watch-like gadget you attach to your wrist to monitor daily activity and sleep patterns. “We want to become a digital playground where people come in, experience it, try it, and find out how all these things can work together around their life,” says Dunn.
The strategy, for all its ambition, could backfire. As Best Buy broadens its focus, it risks clashing with crucial partners. The company is already selling certain products in competition with suppliers, and will likely push other products off store shelves to make room for gear it’s developing. Best Buy’s new role makes it a kingmaker for companies that play along and a serious threat for those that refuse. “Best Buy is avant-garde in its thinking,” says Eugene Fram, a retail expert and professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Business. “The big question is whether they can succeed without alienating their partners.”
Executives at several major consumer electronics companies worry privately about Best Buy’s growing influence. They’re concerned that Dunn and his team could block them from getting innovative products in front of customers or favor Best Buy-backed goods over their own. “We used to call them the 800-pound gorilla,” says the executive of one company that sells televisions and other products to Best Buy. “Now with a lot of competition gone, they’re the 1,000-pound gorilla.”
One example of the rising sensitivity is Best Buy’s recent move into digital services, including music and movies. The company acquired the online music service Napster a year ago and then took a stake in CinemaNow, Sonic Solution’s (SNIC) movie-streaming service, in November. Now the retailer is giving prominent play to Dell (DELL) computers loaded with Napster, beginning with a free year of the music service, and plans similar promotions with CinemaNow through participating partners. Hardware makers, which usually get paid bounties to load such software on their PCs, may find it tougher to get payments from rival services such as Netflix (NFLX) or Rhapsody if they want a piece of the $300 billion digital services market.
Apple (AAPL), Sony (SNE), and other manufacturers could retaliate if they feel Best Buy is getting too heavy-handed, although they would think long and hard before doing so. They could pull products out of the retailer’s stores or forge closer relationships with rivals such as Wal-Mart. Michael Fasulo, Sony Electronics’ chief marketing officer, says that so far his company and Best Buy have avoided serious rifts in part because their executives talk every week and the discussions tend to be more cooperative than adversarial. “They are so focused on the customer experience, and they give us great insights into how to translate technology for customer needs,” he says. “We are both pretty aligned with that.”
Dunn is clear about why he’s pushing for change. He wants to give Best Buy a strategic edge over other retailers. Slugging it out on price with Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Costco is a brutal business, especially as strapped consumers grow hesitant to buy new televisions and home theater gear. If he can make Best Buy the go-to store to test out the latest gear or get exclusive goodies, he can insulate the company from some of the competition.
SAFE BET
Investors appear optimistic. The company’s stock is up more than 80% over the past year, to 44, compared with a 20% increase for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Analysts expect revenues for fiscal year 2010, ending in February, to rise 7.8%, to $48.5 billion, even as profit margins hold steady, according to consensus estimates from Bloomberg. Analyst Thomas Kurey of Gardner Lewis Asset Management, which held about 2 million shares in Best Buy at the end of September, says the company has a very secure position in the tech industry. “The thing about Best Buy is you’re not betting on a single technology. Best Buy is going to be there regardless of where technology is,” he says. “There’s a big swath of customers that are going to want to get a little advice and to touch and feel that new gadget. Best Buy will continue to play an important role in that.”
Dunn, now 49, seemed an unlikely future leader when he joined the company in 1985. At 24, he was working off and on and living at home with his mother, Ethel, who prodded him to find a permanent job. She was employed in accounting at Best Buy, which had a dozen stores at the time, and helped him land a position selling VCRs at one Minnesota outlet. The New Jersey native proved a quick study in learning from the best salespeople and managers. He worked his way up and became heir apparent in 2006. Brad Anderson, the previous CEO, says he wanted to stay in the job “until I found a leader who would take the organization farther than I could.”
On a recent weekday in New York City, the burly Dunn strolled into a store in Union Square to check out the company’s new “discovery zones.” In the Best Buy Mobile zone, for instance, dozens of customers were checking out how Motorola’s (MOT) new Droid smartphone stacks up against Apple’s iPhone. Although it’s too early to tell whether the strategy that lets users try out multiple brands in one place will goose sales and create a more loyal following, Dunn nods approvingly. “What we’re able to do is show how all these things can work together,” he says. “Convergence is actually here now, and all those roads will lead through the center of our store.”
Best Buy isn’t the first to try rewriting the rules of tech retailing. Since Apple started opening retail outlets in 2001, the company has turned its sleek stores into magnets for anyone who wants to test-drive an iPod, iPhone, or Mac. Amazon is trying to make up for its lack of physical stores by offering same-day delivery in several big cities.
BEYOND RETAIL
Still, Best Buy’s strategic position is unique. It has more than 1,000 stores, compared with Apple’s 280, and sells a wide range of competing products, while Steve Jobs’ company doesn’t. Best Buy has 155,000 people working in its stores, and its 20,000-strong Geek Squad is in the field every day, helping customers set up home electronics or fixing products on the fritz. Through its Reward Zone program, a sort of frequent flier card for shoppers, the retailer has built up a list of more than 2.5 million customers who shell out thousands of dollars every year for the latest tech gear. “Users come into Best Buy for reasonably good answers and solutions to the question of what’s the right gadget to buy,” says Manish Rathi, co-founder of Retrevo, an online product-tracking and review company. “Wal-Mart can’t solve that today. Neither can Amazon.”
The job of knowing just how far Best Buy can push before manufacturing partners push back falls in large part to Kal Patel, executive vice-president for emerging business. Former CEO Anderson hired Patel away from the consulting firm Strategos in 2003 to direct the retailer’s strategy, and Dunn has given him broad leeway to transform Best Buy into a technology company. Patel suggests, unapologetically, that Best Buy and its partners will have to get used to a new relationship. “If you’re in the technology business, we’re going to have to learn to deal with constant conflict,” he says.
Over the past two years, Patel has virtually lived on planes and in hotel rooms in an attempt to guide the company’s technology push by learning from established giants and startups. On a recent trip to California, he huddled with executives at Cisco Systems (CSCO) to discuss partnerships aimed at connecting more consumers to more devices. While prepared for conflict, Patel also found plenty of collaboration.
In late 2007, Craig Bramscher, chief executive of Brammo, started searching for an investor and retail partner for the Enertia powercycle, a full-size motorcycle that drives like an electric scooter, with no clutch, gears, or transmission. He thought Best Buy was a natural fit, since the company already has service bays for car stereo installations. A few months later, while munching on hors d’oeuvres at a dinner party with a longtime friend, he discovered the friend knew Patel, and the two got in touch. “I thought they were the only company innovative enough to take a risk on us,” Bramscher says.
Within weeks, 30 Best Buy employees were in Brammo’s Ashland, Ore., headquarters to vet the Enertia. The team spent two days in the skunkworks lab, tearing apart the powercycle and grilling Bramscher’s team to determine whether it fit into their growth strategy. They ultimately were convinced, and in August 2008, Best Buy invested $10 million in the company. As the retailer began lining up approvals in the test markets of California and Oregon to be licensed as motorcycle dealerships, Dunn sent Bramscher a brief note over Twitter. “We’re exercising muscles we didn’t know we had,” he wrote. Best Buy is now pushing to expand the availability of the Enertia to other states.
Dunn and his team, meanwhile, are working on a variety of similar deals. One key area is health and wellness. Earlier this month, the company launched new fitness zones in 40 stores across the nation that include devices such as a Bluetooth-enabled scale that sends weight information to a computer for charting. Next year the company will introduce a toothbrush that wirelessly reports to a PC the number of brushstrokes that a child uses. “We’re scouring the world over, bringing in new talent to help us in a particular space,” says Dunn.
The entrepreneurial spirit is filtering down to established businesses. Jason Bonfig, vice-president of the computing division at Best Buy, works closely with Toshiba and other PC makers to create notebooks under the Best Buy-exclusive Blue Label and Next Class brands. Based on customer feedback, the designs include perks such as backlit keyboards, bigger batteries, and custom chassis colors. It used to take weeks for color samples or material choices to make their way from Taiwan to the PC maker, then on to Bonfig in Minnesota. Fed up, Bonfig began joining the manufacturers on trips every six months to set road maps with their subcontractors.
BROADER FOOTPRINT
The cozier relations helped on the eve of the Oct. 22 Windows 7 launch, when HP offered to put together an exclusive bundle for Best Buy that included a desktop PC, monitor, laptop, netbook, and wireless router for $1,199.99. Best Buy also got the exclusive on Dell’s sleek new $1,799 Adamo XPS notebook, in part because of its early involvement in the manufacturing process. “When you work closely together, there’s more time to innovate elsewhere,” Bonfig says.
Conflict still happens. Some top PC makers are upset about Best Buy’s recent expansion of a service that lets customers reduce the amount of third-party software installed on new computers. Software companies pay HP, Dell, and others hundreds of millions of dollars a year to install trial versions of their programs for virus protection, photo-editing, and the like on new computers; PC makers get another check if buyers sign up to keep using them. Best Buy lets customers select just one antivirus program, say, and removes alternative products. The retailer’s executives say they are simply responding to customer complaints that their new machines are overloaded and sluggish. But PC makers are concerned the retailer is trying to grab more of their scant profit pool.
They may be right. One unusual deal Best Buy has struck is with the antivirus company Kaspersky Lab. The Moscow-based company agreed to let Best Buy manage its software and subscription program in exchange for more prominent placement in stores, says Randy Drawas, Kaspersky’s chief marketing officer. “We get a broader footprint within Best Buy and are seen as a premium brand,” he says. Best Buy salesmen promote Kaspersky’s software, and the retailer gets a slice of the revenues when customers use it. PC makers, though, may lose out on revenues as software from rivals such as McAfee are stripped off machines.
Although it is exerting more influence over the types of software installed on devices, Best Buy says it will continue to sell products from companies that opt out of its programs, such as the one aimed at reducing software clutter. That approach may help Best Buy skirt antitrust issues, even as its share of the U. S. consumer electronics market expands from the current 25%. “I hope we’re not seen as picking winners and losers,” says Dunn. “What we stand for is choice.”
In another move, Bloomberg BusinessWeek has learned, Best Buy plans to launch its own advertising business early next year. The company will let movie studios, PC makers, and other companies run trailers, songs, or commercials on the thousands of televisions, PCs, and cell phones within its stores. Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung have already signed on to advertise. Still, the effort could prove controversial since rivals may end up advertising on each other’s devices. Dunn won’t reveal revenue projections but says the business will “grow into a big piece of what we do.”
Dunn clearly relishes this kind of experimentation. As customers drop into stores around the globe this shopping season, they might run into kiosks where they can swap used games or movies, or DJ booths where would-be disc jockeys can pick up digital turntables, headphones, and lighting. Best Buy is testing out different logos and store layouts, even stocking solar panels in a few markets. Many of the tests won’t pay off, but Dunn figures the retailer can learn and make adjustments for the future. “The easiest changes are when you are backed up against the corner and it’s sort of ‘change or perish,’” he says. “Now we’re trying to change at a time when we are very, very successful.”
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Geek Army
Best Buy says that its biggest not-so-secret weapon is the staff of 155,000 employees worldwide who can talk all things electronic. The company’s BlueShirts do most of their work in stores. But the retailer is increasingly using social media Web sites such as Twitter and Facebook to bringing young, technologically savvy customers into its stores. More than 2,300 Best Buy staffers now provide customer service through Twitter.
To learn more about the initiative, go to http://bx.businessweek.com/best-buy/news/reference/
Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Silicon Valley bureau.
Interesting article. I would have liked to hear more about online strategy. Amazon and Walmart.com have to be a concern, especially Walmart.com being that it is also brick and mortar but with and increasingly effective web presence.
Twitter Comment
Barry Judge » Blog Archive » Business Week Article on Best Buy … [link to post]
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i found several significant points about this article:
1. “We want to become a digital playground where people come in, experience it, try it, and find out how all these things can work together around their life” makes a lot of sense not only for the consumer (being educated, instructed, and inspired about how technology can improve life is so valuable) but also for manufacturers who need outlets for people to experience their products — done right, this approach should result in less competition and more cooperation between bby and manufacturers (e.g., working together to deliver an in-store experience that engages people with the products) — let each business do what it does best
2. key area = health and wellness — the intersection of technology and health is such a rich, exciting, huge growth area and bby can position itself to not only participate in the trend but lead it — blue shirt nation/twelpforce can help people understand and navigate all the new products, services, applications, information, etc. — and with closer ties to developers, bby can inform and influence innovations with its customer intimacy
3. “I hope we’re not seen as picking winners and losers,” says Dunn. “What we stand for is choice.” i actually think bby should position itself as an editor and curator of products — as a big box retailer (and to satisfy antitrust requirements i suppose), bby should offer breadth of line, but there’s a lot of value in helping consumers sort out the good from the bad, the best from the good — too much choice is not a good thing
these are just some initial reactions to the article — food for thought — thanks for listening
denise lee yohn
Barry,
Clearly you and Brian make a great team. The concept of being in the production facility is a partnership necessary to succeed in the future. It began with Intel developing next generation products to determine the requirements for their chips and has been seen over and over again, one prominent example was googles involvement in the development of the Droid.
Having just retired from the Army after running the Army Strong Campaign I’d encourage you both to look at producing products that have a focus on education. Education is a strategic crisis in our country and we need companies such as Best Buy who are innovative business leaders to step up and help educate your customers and employees of tomorrow.
Would love to talk more about these ideas with you. I live 10 minutes from your headquarters. See my website for more information.
Dave
Great reading. As a consumer currently shopping for a new desktop station, it’s good, in my opinion, to have an invested retailer use leverage to curb the “uber-choice” approach computer manufacturers use to gain revenue. Just because the manufacturer feels any given add-on might serve a potential customer at some time doesn’t mean it should be on the computer. When my program menu becomes an enormous outfield advertising board for any paid plug, its annoying.
The interactive experience in the store is important to me when buying techware. I like to play around with the options and get the opinion of another person as I make my decisions. Best Buy’s sales staff are definitely a cut above the gawkers at Wal-Mart and lets face it, retailers are going to have to try harder than ever to drive foot traffic from reluctant consumers. An interesting, fun approach that educates a buyer and creates an entertaining retail experience will promote the desire to walk in regularly and increase the chances Best Buy will have to secure the sale.
Now it will be interesting to see how Best Buy continues to carry this approach through in the store’s future design presentation. If you look at all the retail footage currently committed to hard copy CD’s/DVD’s and Games, the need for that dedication slips each day. Downloading stations in-store will continue to liberate that valuable real estate and contribute to the growth of improved selling environments in consumer electronics. I have some ideas around gaming if you’re interested in hearing them?!
.02 Thanks!
I have always wondered why Best Buy has not taken a leadership role in the technology development in the past. In my mind this is what someone like Best Buy MUST do to stay alive, or choose to become a direct competitor of Wal-Mart and Target by being a one stop shop for all household items, not going to happen. There are dangers in doing something like this. I believe Sharper Imagine, even though smaller, was the technolgy gadget store and we see where they went last year.
The key will be to fucus on a specific target market and continue to bring technology to that market. The fitness market for example: I would be interested in the product mentioned above but in a few years when I am ready to upgrade I want to be able to go to Best Buy and know that they will still offer the innovative fitness product. This goes for many different target markets. Not just the best technology at the time regardless of use but the best technology for the target market that Best Buy has decided to focus on.
Great article, it is a new era now that your brick and mortar store competitors are no longer present. It is now the online stores that you might have to watch over. I think one point missed in the article is why one would select to shop at Best Buy rather than the big box Walmart, the experience. You shop at Best Buy and know there are people there to help you make the best selection based on their knowledge.
I agree with the comment above, I would like to know more about the online strategy. Here would be a great place to carry one the store experience.
Barry, what a great article and wonderful press for Best Buy. I really can’t imagine Walmart being a significant competitor based purely on its contrasting store experience. For significant electronic purchases, consumers want to be able to immerse themselves in a store that feels pleasant, while providing outstanding service and the opportunity to test-drive products. For many, these purchases are based on far more than price. While there will always be those that decide on the dime, inspiring trust and loyalty in BB consumers is far more valuable in the long-term.
Rather than setting the goal to win in Retailing, BBY should set a goal of winning in technology and set it’s sites on Apple and Google. Geek Squad needs to compete more with CNET and GS should have some podcasts.
History provides some great examples of the “retailer” pushing the “manufacturer” to do something brand new that the manufacturer wouldn’t have done at all (or as fast). Sometimes their survival depends on it.
I’m an engineer who worked at Pan Am (the airline). Because WE were the ones dealing with the end-customer (the people who flew international routes), WE were the ones who were in the best position to understand the importance of the business opportunity to fly long-haul routes, like NY-Tokyo and LA to Sydney NON-STOP for the first time. WE were the ones that had to convince the manufacturer, Boeing, of the size of that opportunity, and also SHOW THEM how such a plane could be built quickly from what they already had “on the shelf”. As a result the “747SP” was born, which not only made a huge difference in the lives of the thousands of people who flew those routes, but also created a veritable monopoly on an incredibly profitable business for Pan Am that lasted more than a decade (and also kept it in business during that time).
Best Buy is in the same position. EVERY DAY customers come into Best Buy and ask for things that don’t exist–a specific feature that no existing make or model of a device has, or some kind of a new device. That conversation usually starts with: “Do you have anything that…” I myself have had that conversation with your employees DOZENS of times and walked away disappointed. Is anybody listening? Did they tell anyone about it? Was there a systematic way for them to log that feedback into a cumulative memory of what customers had been asking for? Could those customers be re-contacted for a follow-up conversation about what they wanted, or if a solution was found? Was there any incentive in place for employees to record all that information in a usable way? People who don’t buy anything are never selected to be part of a focus group.
If you really want to do what’s described in the Business Week article, start with listening carefully to your customers unfilled needs, and use that very special knowledge to become the one that pushes the manufacturers to jointly create the new things that people want. In your role as a very large scale retailer WITH A SALES FORCE, you have the golden opportunity to be the co-creator and sole source of all kinds of new, unique, and innovative things that people want, and to make a ton of money in the process. Otherwise, I think the on-line providers, who don’t have to pay for expensive retail stores, will slowly grind you down with lower prices. Customers will use you as a showroom to browse and get advice, but not buy. The “best buy” will be online.
In what direction is Bestbuy going?
Health and fitness zones. Motorcycles.
What could be next as i’m intrigued at the possibilities.
Has anyone tried buying a Pioneer receiver model VSX-1019ah-k or VSX-819H-K lately?
“Unavailable” is what I keep getting. Both mid-range receiver’s for the common man.
I’m getting the picture loud and clear here. I’ll take my shopping to someone who actually has the goods and this isn’t the first time i’ve been disappointed at Bestbuy’s lack of in-store merchandise. But it is the last time.
“Best Buy says that its biggest not-so-secret weapon is the staff of 155,000 employees worldwide who can talk all things electronic.”
If this is Best Buy’s biggest weapon, then why isn’t more money being provided to support the employees? Best Buy’s employees experienced a structural change in the beginning of FY10 with the promise that the new structure would ensure that they would now be properly staffed and have enough hours to put more bodies on the floor. Yet a year later many Best Buys are seeing labor crunches where there isn’t enough money to allocate for quarterly let alone monthly training meetings. Best Buy’s best sales associates find it difficult to make a living off of the wage ceiling that Best Buy has put in place for its full time employees. There Blue Crew Bucks program gives some hope that they will se an extra couple hundred in their paycheck but caps out at a certain level. How are these employees supposed to be rewarded for going beyond that? A 30 year old working full time sales at Best Buy (which isn’t over 32 hours) cannot come close to supporting a family after being demoted several times because his position was eliminated. I joined the company in 2005 and was sold on the vision that I can make a career out of this company, was told about Brian Dunn’s story of moving up the ranks, and began to care about the growth of this company and our business. As a leader in one of your retail stores I understand that there is a need to grow financially and continue to be profitable in a time of compressing margins, but where is the support for your best sales associates? Employees lose faith in the company because they see it as they are doing more work now than they were when they were Magnolia Home Theater Pros and making more money. It becomes difficult as a leader to motivate these employees when they do not have the chance to receive a raise and they have very little opportunities to earn more for performing better. I do not want to see a commissioned sales floor ever at Best Buy, and I know that Best Buy is testing several solutions out, but there has to be something in place for Best Buy to keep their best sales associates soon before we lose them to expanding competitors.
Interesting piece. while BBY is in a great position to experiment, the author omits their need to do so. BBY has massive stores that used to be filled 25% with music CDs and DVDs and then video games. All that is going away or gone, and BBY is left with both empty space and no revenues from those segments, which has migrated to various online services. So experimentation is a necessity to find ways to make money from all that vacant square footage.
As for the professor’s observation that this retail power is an innovation – its been walmarts model forever. They have long used their power and relations to influence manufacturer behavior. But with them, its typically been focused on taking out costs, or in service of walmart (eg, supply chain efficiency and/or data exchange) rather than (primarily) in service of customers and product innovation.
The author also short changes the scope of BBY’s power today. They are not just the dominant channel and potentially preferencing one mfr vs. another, but they are now also a competitor. With so much of tech manufacturing outsourced, even by the ‘manufacturers’, BBY can just as easily go make it themselves, as they have done with TVs, if their suppliers like dell, hp etc don’t go along.
BBY is most notable, i think, in that they have taken the traditional benefits and business model of the online world and figured out how to apply it to their advantage in the very physical world of bricks-mortar big box retailing. In a world where physical manufacturing is entirely fluid, the value comes from the customer insight and a well-running innovation and learning process.
This most interesting point being made is to not get lazy and complacent. Creating the necessary agility is critical in the current environment, and being able to adapt in real time. The other key is as the leader being able to continue creating disruption by changing the game will keep the competitors off balance. Innovation starts with a keen understanding of the customer relationship, and behavioral economics.
I am curious as to how you will transition from a ‘retailer brand’ that hosts or vends other well know ‘retail brands’ into an actual product brand itself – per:
“He wants to go beyond the typical big-box retailer role of selling commodity products such as televisions and personal computers and become a central player in determining which products come to market and how big-spending customers choose the latest gear.”
I would think you are definitely in a position of strength possibly from being closer to the consumer physically and to some degree virtually – yes I use both persistently to my wife’s regret
However, this does seem like a dicey play possibly. I am guessing the entity with the strongest knowledge of and relationship with the consumers – especially genY or genZ or whatever is next – will win out.
Hey Barry, I don’t know if you will actually read this, but I have a complaint about the one “Best Buy” Spots on the looping for Home Theater. The one in questions is when the guy states “I don’t know about you, but I always get home and then remember the batteries, that’s why best buy has them right here for you, are you all stocked up” OK as a best buy employee that kinda leads out to that best buy employees actually FORGET we carry them, that really does not represent best buy in a positive way, If I were the one doing the commercial (and the holiday adds had ZERO Asset Protection associates in them) I would say “Hey have you ever gotten home and said (both hands to head)Oh No I forgot the batteries, well just so you know We have them here at best buy so you DON’T have to forget them, So Come Into Best Buy where our name says it all BEST Buy!
Thanks for reading
Robb Heisey – Best Buy Store #518 – Kingston, NY
I am currently working on my MBA and I am writing a paper about creativity. You company provided me with a lot of insight and great material.
You make a great case study!!!
Thanks
I am still a Best Buy loyalist- especially when I need some advice. Billy can answer a few questions and provide me tips I wouldn’t know to consider through online research (even extensive). But the problem this article observes — the demise of competitors — is sadly reflected in the weekend circular that is my never-miss reading. I miss the deals from the Circuit City ads. And the obsession with TVs means I can’t count on it to find some obscure $100-$300 toy I seek.
Barry,
Is this accurate?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/24/best-buy-advertising-higher-than-regular-prices-as-sales/
[...] Judge, the CMO of BestBuy, blogged about the article, to surprising support from his [...]