Yeah, sometimes it's easier to start fresh than it is to try to turn around a dysfunctional company.
Still, somebody's going to get retail right for the online era. The opportunity is just to big. It might come from an online retailer moving to brick-and-mortar, rather than vice-versa.
Actually, it sounds like an impossible vision to achieve. But before you can implement a vision – real or (in this case) imagined, you need get the fundamentals right. Nothing's been right with Best Buy from a performance perspective since the middle part of last decade. They have a new CEO, Hubert Joly, who was brought in last September to restructure the company. Among other things he needs a fresh board, which is operating without a full team (there are only seven of the eleven director slots currently serving) and a good house cleaning. We'll have to wait and see what he comes up with.He has his work cut out for him.
Best Buy's vision is to own the online shopping experience as well as the offline one, so wherever you buy, Best Buy wins. Sounds like they're not executing on that well at all, though.
Mitch, I'm still wondering about the vision. Their execution is flawed, but it doesn't seem to me like they have a vision. From where I sit both as a customer and an observer, they look like they're simply trying to imitate other companies. If I've missed something, let me know - do you know what their vision is?
Mitch, I'm still wondering about the vision. Their execution is flawed, but it doesn't seem to me like they have a vision. From where I sit both as a customer and an observer, they look like they're simply trying to imitate other companies. If I've missed something, let me know - do you know what their vision is?
Mitch - as a marketer and having tried (really) hard to be a customer – both online and in the store - I would have to disagree.
What's the vision, "Best Buy carries stuff?" I see nothing that differentiates them from their competition. At the store level their product selection continues to get smaller and smaller. They carry only mid-to-low-end-priced products in the store, attempting to offset the lack of choice with their private label Rocketfish – at best an iffy strategy and a very mediocre product line. Combine that with some of the worst retail merchandising I've seen (How does fitness gear, yoga mats and AA batteries for sale as old as my ten-year-old dog fit with HD TV's and computer gear?). They staff the stores with a skeleton crew whose knowledge of the products they carry outside individual departments is "not much." Then there's customer service, which in BB's case lacks the "service" part of the equation.
Their online site is a mishmash of a very limited Best Buy offering intertwined with "marketplace" stores and no clear distinction between the two. The marketplace is made up of mostly unratedstores whose idea of fast delivery is a throwback to ca. 2002 3-4 day processing time to ship.
Once upon a time Best Buy had a vision and transformed the retail electronics. Now they seem hopelessly stuck. That will continue until their founder and CEO gets out of the way in favor of a fresh sensibility and a new vision.
I agree, that is a training issue, and thats exaclty why it wouldnt be so prudent to spill such technology without training employees. I myself spend a lot of my time in stores browing stuff... and only rarely do I come across a salesman who gives me the room to 'browse'.. rest everyone seems to be overly motivated to sell, if you know what I mean. So yes although its not a technology issue, but with the current employee training conditions - having the entire fleet chasing around customers feels like a slippery slope... This is why I love Walmart.. I can roam around all I want, and If i need some help- I got some ... But thats just me.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
The US National Security Agency learned the hard way that it can be dangerous to give a contractor too much money and access, with too little scrutiny. The NSA and other government agencies hire tens of thousands of contractors
a year to analyze data. Edward Snowden -- who revealed himself as the NSA leaker after fleeing the country -- was one such contractor, reportedly holding a $122,000 salaried position at Booz Allen Hamilton at the time of his departure.
Midsize businesses rarely achieve the same standards of security in their own datacenters as professional providers that specialize in delivering these services to organizations.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
