Best Buy Co, Inc. Preliminary Audit Plan

Best Buy Co., Inc. is a multinational company in the United States and it deals, with consumer electronics, and accounts 19% of the business. The company also operates in Mexico, Puerto Rico, China, and Canada. Some of the subsidiaries of the company include CinemaNow, Geek Squad, Pacific Sales, and Magnolia Audio Video and operates in both Future Shop label, and Best Buy in Canada. Best Buy Co. Inc and its subsidiaries operate more than 1,150 stores internationally and domestically. The company also operates more than 100 “ZoomShops” or Buy Express Automated retail Stores, operated by the Zoom Systems, in both malls and airports in the entire country of the U.S. The company is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota, U.S (Scott,

Best Buy Co., Inc. is organized as a Richfield, Minnesota, based US Corporation and operates a multi-business unit structure. Company’s Board of directors consists of nine members with a Chairman and CEO and eight directors. Best Buy Co., Inc.’s operations consists of seven departments whose heads are directly responsible to the Chairman / CEO. The current organizational chart of the Best Buy Co., Inc. is as

Inventory levels over the past 4 years have remained on an increasingly consistent track as their revenue has risen. According to Best Buy (2010), this rise in revenue and assets is partly due to the fact that they enter new markets and open new stores across the world. The latest opportunities that they have come across include new stores in Europe and other areas overseas. This is new territory for Best Buy but has been a successful venture based on their flexibility with their inventory systems that they have in place. The following table presents the last five year financial highlights according to the Financial Statements and Supplementary Data of Annual Report on Form 10-K. (Investor Relations, 2010) Five-Year Financial Highlights

Best Buy Co. Inc. a public company is known to be the largest electronic retailer in the United States of America. This may attribute to the fact that it commands a market share if 19% these results in estimated electronic sales in the United States, 19% of these items are sold by Best Buy Incorporated. This company is a large company with about 2,800 stores in other countries outside the Unite States. These countries include: Canada, Mexico, China and Turkey. To add on to this, it has a number of subsidiaries namely the Geek Squad, Pacific Sales, Future Shop and Magnolia Audio Videos.

In this industry Economies of scale reaches at global level while Best Buy fulfill customers demand on National level as per culture and choice of countrymen. As this industry becomes very grooming industry that’s why level of competition not only increased but also it reaches at

The aim of this report is to develop an audit plan using the 2007/2008 annual reports of the WesFarmers. This report will provide an understanding of the underlying concepts of an overall audit strategy. This strategy will bring forward the direction and scope of the WesfFarmers audit plan. This report will address five major points these are as follows:

This report analyzes the concerns that Best Buy will face, and addresses them from a behavioural and legal perspective. In order to maximize the benefits and limit the risk, our analysis indicates that Best Buy should wind down Future Shop operations and maintain it as an inactive company.

The (RCC) / VC model is used to determine how Best Buy bundled its resources to create capabilities and how these capabilities become the company’s core competencies which will be their source of competitive advantage.

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.

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

A continued weakness that Best Buy continues to face is their reliance on the brick and mortar store format. While Best Buy has started to offer business through its online website, most transactions rely on their physical stores. According the Star Tribune, “Best Buy, which has 1,360 stores in the United States, has been quietly closing a few dozen a year” “Target, Best Buy and even Amazon among retailers who see new power in stores, 2017”. Best Buy is working on reformatting how they utilize their physical stores in relation to their online store, but to achieve this it requires time and uses

Best Buy debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 1987. In 1989, the company introduced a new store concept that replaced dimly lit industrial-style stores with brighter and more fashionable stores. Best Buy also did away with commissioned salespeople. The commission-free sales environment created a more relaxed shopping environment free of the high-pressure sales tactics used in other stores, but was unpopular with salespersons and suppliers. Some suppliers, such as Maytag, Whirlpool and Sony, were upset that salespeople would no longer be pushing their products and stopped selling their wares in Best Buy stores. The suppliers returned after Best Buy’s sales and revenue

Due to worries on quality of products, Best Buy relies on few reputable suppliers. Once there is issue with suppliers, for example, disagreement on prices or sudden shutdown of suppliers, Best Buy will have to face the problem of stock shortage. Other than that, Best Buy does not provide enough training to staffs, especially salespersons. They do not have sufficient information or knowledge to reply enquiries from customers. Worse still, in some cases, non-knowledgeable staffs even provide incorrect information to the buyers. Besides, the company does not have enough supervision on the quality of products and it results in several product

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.

According to this case, and concerning about the strategy that Best Buy has created, retailers can similarly create a retailer-led product strategy to leverage their customer knowledge for product differentiation and to understand what the needs of the customers are; they must discover what satisfies the customer and what not. In addition, the retailer can seek for news partnerships, new stores, new countries and new categories and services in order to increase their net sales and their share market. It’s very important invest in marketing study aiming to discover what the other companies are doing. Besides, with the time, the smaller retailer can increase significantly even more than the