Best Buy Holiday Plans

Will Best Buy's Holiday plans work? Here is the plan - and some questions - Let me know your opinion.

Best Buy has announced a connected holiday season. One where the CE product they offer, the Geek Squad and installation service, as well as price are the formula that will win with customers this season.

Though consumers have not been that focused on TVs, they expect that to be different this Fall. They plan to feature their Dynex and Insignia brand, but also expect to have new featured and aggressively priced TVs from the top brands in the industry.

Geek Squad / Service is set up to handle 4 channels. Stores, car installations, on-line, and phone support.

They have combined their PC and Home Theater experts to be able to handle the integrated installations needed today. Previously PC installs and Home Theater installs were handled separately and by separate groups.

Best Buy has also announced their Holiday Hiring plans. 29,000 seasonal employees. That is the same amount they hired last year, no plans to increase.

Now for the interesting part - NPD recently released a report showing how people are NOT living in a connected world.

75% of consumers did NOT connect or download content in the past 3 months.

Of those that did, 15% did from a computer, 6% from a video game player, 4% from a smartphone, 2% from a connected blu-ray, dvr type device.

Bottom line is that most consumers are not motivated by the current apps available to get connected.


So here in lies the concern - Best Buy is aggressively going after the connected customer - of those buying connected items 75% don't care to be connected.

Does Best Buy have the time / money / people to convince 75% of consumers to care about connectability?

Tough position for a retailer to be in, this is an Industry Issue - lot's of technology being produced, and very little take on usage. Industry needs to take the time to figure out why, and what needs to be done to bring products to the customers that they will actually use the benefits they bring.

Why develop new product if there is no ability to have people see the value of what benefits it brings - they only buy it when it is cheap enough, and 75% don't use the features the item even has.

Why make it in the first place?

JZ