Analysis Of The Closure Of Future Shop Stores Across Canada

Best Buy’s History & Main Characters: Best Buy is Minneapolis-based and is North America's leading specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. Throughout Best Buy's 37-year history, the company has maintained the tradition of making life fun and easy for customers and employees, while providing a significant return to partners and investors. It has 80,000 employees and over 550 stores in the U.S., in addition to the brands Best Buy Canada, Future Shop and Magnolia Hi-Fi. Their leadership is led by Dick Schulze, Founder and Chairman, Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman and CEO, Al Lenzmeier, President and COO, and Darren Jackson, Executive Vice

Best Buy is a multinational retailer of consumer electronics, computing and mobile phone products, entertainment products, appliances, and related services. The company operates retail stores and call centers and conducts online retail operations under a variety of brand names such as Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, The Carphone Warehouse, Five Star, Future Shop, Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and The Phone House (Bestbuy.com, 4). The domestic segment consists of all operations within the United States, while the international segment includes all operations in Canada, Europe, Mexico, and China. The Best Buy 's success is contingent on the market 's demand for electronics. The company 's strategy is to provide good customer service combined with lower prices (news.cnet.com). Best Buy 's success is directly related to economic conditions, the cost of goods, and other things like fuel prices. The company 's strategy depends upon the ability to offer customers a broad selection of name-brand products; therefore, leading its success to depend upon satisfactory supplier relationships (Bestbuy.com, 8). Best Buy, as it is included in the retail segment, is a seasonal store. Their stronger quarter is the fourth quarter, which they can contribute to the holiday season for their success.

Best Buy’s mission statement is “our formula is simple: we’re a growth company focused on better solving the unmet needs of our customers – and we rely on our employees to solve those puzzles” (bestbuy.com). The company has an objective to to provide the best technological products and service solutions to customers throughout its markets. Best also has as an objective to provide expert services to customers at prices that are described as unbeatable. The objectives also include the company having sustainable growth and earnings. The company marketing the products that is based on an operating model that is considered as customer centricity achieves the sustained growth and earnings. Best Buy uses a strategy that focuses on helping customers to be able to realize what they needed to stay connected with technology and the products that are desired. The company also spends time monitoring the needs of its customers, which

Best Buy Co., Inc. is currently the world’s largest retailer for consumer electronics. The company has 1,400 brick and mortar stores and is a popular online retailer as well. The stores serve as display room for various online retailers. Best Buy consumers can purchase electronic products such as mobile, corded and cordless phones, televisions, cameras, personal computers, laptops, appliances and more (David & F.R., 2015). Today’s society relies on convenience and technology, forcing companies to implement new ideas and projects in an effort to maintain their ability to compete with other companies. For continued success the company must look at the internal and external issues the company may face as well as their competitors and their best practices that are contributing to their success.

The Canadian retail market has a complex and multidimensional history. Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada written by Donica Belisle, explores the journeys of major Canadian department stores such as Eaton’s, Simpson’s and HBC between the 1890’s and 1940’s. Specifically, she analyzes their development, morals and societal views from a feminist and paternalist perspective. These complex theories are coupled with both examples and clear explanations in order to gain a deep insight into the history of the Canadian retail market. In addition to a brief overview of the book, I will discuss the interest level, relevance, structure and potential bias within Belisle’s work.

In February of this year, the Benton Harbor Target store closed its doors for the final time. Citing below-average sales and “decreasing profitability,” the company’s decision resulted in many unhappy Southwest Michigan residents who are now forced to drive over twice as far to the next-closest Target location (CITATION). Target currently operates hundreds of locations spread across the United States, and many loyal patrons see the retailing giant as necessary and infallible, even considering increasing online competition. Despite this popular perception, however, the unfortunate fate of the Benton Harbor location was not Target’s only failure. In fact, it pales in comparison to the chain’s first foray into an international market.

In the world of commerce and retail today, there are a variety of retail stores that are all geared toward the customers who are interested in saving money and finding bargains on their daily purchases, as well as on some of their major purchases. Some of the retail stores that are in this category of low prices and discount prices are Big K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Inc., Fred’s Dollar Store, Family Dollar Store, and Ollie’s Bargain. Due to the increase in e-commerce and online purchases, several of these retail stores, such as Big K-Mart and Fred’s Dollar stores are closing in many areas of the country. Since there has been an increase in the demand for more sales and discounts by customers and there are less discounts stores available, retail stores

In the international segment each of the nine European countries run their operations at a smaller level than the Best Buy branded stores but the rest of the branded stores in those territories run an operating model similar to that used in the U.S. stores. The only differences would be in Canada and China where Best Buy runs and supports two principal brand companies. In Canada the Future Shop stores “Have commissioned sales associates who take a proactive role in assisting customers and driving

The retail industry as a whole is suffering with the onslaught of major player, Amazon. More specifically, brick and mortar stores are struggling to keep pace with the changing dynamic of today’s shopper. As consumers look to simplify their shopping experience by taking advantage of the ease of online shopping, the bulk of Target and Kohl’s business models are centered around brick and mortar stores. Target and Kohl’s both suffer from this declining way of doing business. Operational, Market & Economic Risks in a Global Setting

Target, over a 100-year-old company, has been one out of the most leading and popular retail stores business in America, which supplies thousands of product categories for customers every day. Nowadays, Target owns over 1,800 stores in the United States and has a huge amount of employees, 365,000 in all outlets. The success of Target in the domestic market triggers company to expand to a foreign market, in this research, Canadian market will be mentioned. In 2011, Target brought over 120 Zellers stores of Hudson’s Bay Co. in Canada and create a strategy in open a department store chain with the

In a recent change within Staples Inc. they have begun to shut down 140 of its 330 stores located across North America under scoring the pressure that big box retailers feel from rival e-commerce and discount players. With the end of the plan resulting in 225 stores being closed down as a choice of Staples trying to reduce their square footage. Due to this change within the company Staples Inc. must take in to account what this change will do to their company’s infrastructures, price, services, and its reputation. An effect from this down size that Staples Inc. many weaknesses have arose within the company itself that should be taken into consideration before they become a major threat to the company.

Best Buy, a familiar retailer in the technology world, is struggling to stay on top. Online and mass stores have cornered the market in terms of convenience, customer service and price matching. The recent closing of over two hundred stores alongside falling sales has experts predicting that the giant won’t be in business long. Using a results-only work environment (ROWE), Best Buy has removed the customer from the equation and forced many employees out. A marketing disaster, Best Buy must change its marketing strategy from sales-based to a customer-based to stay afloat.

The current legal status of Future Shop is a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy Canada, which operates under Best Buy USA. First of all, to address the management team’s concern of going through a similar process like that of Target, it is important to note that this situation is not likely to happen. Target declared bankruptcy as the company was insolvent and sought protect under the CCAA, which is a costly process that significantly damaged Target’s reputation (Sturgeon, 2015). As Best Buy’s decision to close Future Shop was not a matter of financial insolvency, Future Shop does not have to declare bankruptcy to terminate its operations. For Best Buy to cease and consolidate Future Shop’s operations in Canada, there are two options to take:

Target vendors will now be faced with “stepping out on faith” not knowing whether the adjustments made to their business and products will help Target in the decrease of showrooming. Target’s vendors are risking the customer-favoring the price and the design of the product. Vendors will begin to wonder will they be able to profit from the change or will it drive them into the ground. They will ponder on the difference being cost efficient or will it drive up the costs to develop the product. The vendors could start to use “in store only” on some of the prices of the products to make sure that competition cannot copy the prices just as well as “online only”. Hopefully doing this will make customers go to the store to purchase at a reasonable

It makes sense for Best Buy to worry more about Wal-Mart, which is getting more involved in electronics retailing, and less about Circuit City. The competitors are a diverse lot today, and for them to continue to grow they're going to have to get much better at everything they do and define themselves in clear ways. Best Buy's plan is to revamp its stores according to the types of customers they serve. A strategy previously mentioned, customer centricity, focuses on targeting five prototypical customers, all of whom have been given names: "Jill," a busy suburban mom; "Buzz," a focused, active younger male; "Ray," a family man who likes his technology practical; "BB4B" (short for Best Buy for Business), a small professional employer; and "Barry," an affluent professional male who's likely to drop tens of thousands of dollars on a home theater system. Their most current focus is on a "Jill" based store, the soccer mom who has money to spend but typically hasn't a clue of where or how to find products in the store. According to the data Best Buy has collected, Jill shops a few times a year, usually twice at an electronics store, but she usually spends a significant amount.