January 17, 2014

How Did Best Buy Collapse So Badly?

It is not as if we all do not see this coming. Who buys at Best Buy anyway?

Personally, for the past 10 years, I had gone to Best Buy to check the TVs, computers and products I like, and then go online for my purchases. And why not? Shopping on line costs less and they ship right to your front door, especially for big items like 42 inch TVs.

That was one big reason Circuit City went out of business. It used to be the 'show room' everyone went to, to check out the products before buying online. After circuit City's demise, the go to store is Best Buy. It comes as no surprise then that Best Buy's holiday sales were so dismal.

Read this article from Yahoo!:

Online shopping's rise somehow sneaks up on retailers — and consumers win
By Michael Santoli | Michael Santoli

The online-shopping revolution has been heralded and hyped since the mid-1990s, and has been advancing quickly for a decade. So how did we end up with a consumer industry that seems unprepared for it?
Consider the evidence that's piled up over the past few months, showing growth in e-commerce has indisputably begun to upend the familiar American shopping economy:

-Visits to retail stores during the holiday-shopping season collapsed, despite broad improvement in the economy and job market. As the Wall Street Journal neatly detailed Friday, measured in-store traffic in November and December was around half the level of the same period in 2010 – a time when the economic recovery was in a significantly more fragile state. But that’s not because folks didn’t spend – industry estimates place 2013 holiday-spending growth at close to 5%.

Continue reading from Yahoo! >>

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