Is Best Buy On Life Support? An Analysis

[platinumsword]

The once great and expanding Best Buy (BB) has begun a path to self-destruction, with a recent quarterly loss of $1.7 billion.

Circuit City, Silo, Crazy Eddie, Incredible Universe and the Good Guys have already passed on as US consumer electronics chains. This Best Buy loss reflects a withdrawal from Europe and the closure of 11 UK superstores, its European online store, and of course, lower overall US same store sales.

But there’s more to it than that.

Link: http://hdguru.com/is-best-buy-on-life-support-an-analysis/7874/

[olyteddy]

I guess I’m like most Americans, go to BB to look then order it with 2 day Amazon Prime shipping or get it at Costco…

[AllanDeGroot]

[QUOTE=olyteddy;2631726]I guess I’m like most Americans, go to BB to look then order it with 2 day Amazon Prime shipping or get it at Costco…[/QUOTE]

When Best Buy shrunk their physical music department by 80% I pretty much lost interest in browsing there when I could just as easily shop Amazon without the loud music they THOUGHT their clientel would like, without the oblivious sales staff and without the long checkout lines.

with the death of Best buy exclusive versions of music CD’s I find no reason
to go there, particularly when shipping from Amazon is cheaper than the cost of the gasoline to drive to best buy

they made a penny wise decision to reduce their music department and created a self fulfilling prophecy that they’d lose money on selling music.

AD

[Dartman]

They used to have a separate section just for DVD Audio and SACD disks and they decided to kill it and mix the few hi res audio disks they had with all the others. Now I can’t find any to feed my Denon multi format DVD player unless I want to go online. I know the formats weren’t promoted well but when a store has a special section for them it makes it easy to seek out the best sounding audio disks out there. I used to get great deals from Circuit City from time to time on gear, in fact my old Panasonic blu ray player was a demo from them and so was that Denon at greatly reduced prices so I could afford to upgrade. The more big box stores we loose the less competition and prices will go up.
I still do buy local when possible as at least I can walk in and see and try out what I might want to buy, plus if it turns out to be bad or not what I really wanted I can just go back and return or exchange it easily and quickly.
In fact I just did that at a Big Lots store on a Tablet they had on sale and the exchange was quick and painless and the store is only 10 minutes away.
As long as the price is close I’ll always buy local, other specialized things it’s better to go online.

[zap_em]

Best buy
is a pretty good electronics store,and they
have been having reasonable prices latley.
The problem is in this economy most people
can’t afford to pay a lot all at once for a
product like a computer or hdtv?
Zap:sad:

[UTR]

IMO, the best reason to buy costly items at Best Buy is for their 30 day return policy. I have used it several times to exchange a purchase I wasn’t satisfied with for a different model or an upgrade over what I initially purchased. This is a great buffer against buying something online, being disappointed and having to live with the item because shipping, paying restocking fees etc. are problematic.

[zap_em]

Utr
While I like bestbuy and,as I said before
I am sorry they are folding up. I prefer Hsn,shopnbc,
or qvc. The reason you can try the product,and it’s
hassle free return policy. No restocking fees. Also
the best part you don’t have to pay all at once
interest free.
Zap:)