Best Buy Company, A New York Stock Exchange Traded Supplier Of Consumer Electronic Devices

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 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 the largest electronics retailer in United States with international presence in Mexico, Canada and China. Best Buy Co., Inc. is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota and currently operates more than one thousand brick & mortar stores. Founded in 1966 as “Sound of Music”, Best Buy Co., Inc. evolved from a small regional audio specialty store to a multinational consumer electronics retail chain within a short span of time. The company’s current name “Best Buy” was adopted in 1983 with an aim to emphasize a greater consumer electronics branding. Best Buy Co., Inc. went public in 1987 when it got listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

It had a thriving business model for several years. It sustained the 2008 economic crisis while its competitors like Circuit City and CompUSA went bankrupt. Best Buy has had a rough run since the beginning with ups and downs. However, Best Buy’s continued efforts to diversify its products targeting specific market segments are considered to be the key reason for the company avoiding the downfall that its competitors (Circuit City, CompUSA) faced during the economic crisis of 2007. (Fehr, 2010)

If we are in a recession or there are a lot of layoffs in the area of a certain store its business is directly affected. Unlike with some corporations such as CISCO systems or Ameritech they are in many way's utility services and aren't directly influenced by the state of the economy. Best Buy's CEO Dick Schulze admitted in an article that sales are down due to the current state of the economy: "We had expected earnings to decline in a decelerating economy," Best Buy chief executive Richard Schulze said in a statement. But, he added, "I remain confident that we are on track to deliver earnings growth of 16 to 18 percent this year," or $2.16 to $2.21 per share, assuming no significant decline in the economy. ‘ this seems to be the case with most retail chains but with the amount of expansion that Best Buy is working towards there is plenty of room to make up for losses.

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.

These changes were necessary with the growing instability in Europe and with the ever changing economy in China so in the meantime “Best Buy has decided to explore more profitable growth options for the Best Buy brand in these markets, including the option to reopen two of the closed stores in China at a later date”.()

Financial Strengths and weaknesses at Best Buy Corporation Best Buy Co., Incorporated experiences low gross margins and rising confliction from competitors with lower prices on especially on electronics While Best Buy Co., Incorporated is showing improvement over the rivalries in the feeble worldwide economy, the gross margins are not up to stakeholder’s guidelines. This is because of the ascent of rivalry in the innovation market, giving space for organizations like Amazon and Wal-Mart which offer practically identical items at a lower prices. With the innovation business sector being in steady change, the foundation of business sector fragments for individual stores in light of geographic area and population and the procurement of different

[“Look at why big companies die,” says Shari Ballard, Best Buy’s executive vice President, retail channel. “They implode on themselves. They create all these systems and processes--- and then end up with a very small percentage of people who are supposed to solve complex problems, while the other 98% of people just execute. You just can’t come up with good enough ideas that way to keep growing.”]

Best Buy had a history of being able to adapt to the changing markets and their ability to do so contributed to their success (i.e. the vastly expanded product line, evolution to superstores, expansion, acquisition, converting from commission to salaried sales force.). The perception that customers were focusing less on the technical aspect of products and redirecting their attention to service and support, led to Anderson’s custom-centricity initiative. This transition and the rollout of 144 new “centricity” Best Buy stores was being blamed for the company missing third quarter earnings in 2005, resulting in a 12% decline in stock value and a loss of nearly $2B in market capitalization. Did Anderson perform the proper strategic market planning analysis before selecting and implementing the centricity initiative?

Best Buy Inc. has built a reputation as a ground-breaking retail giant. It is known as one of the first “big box” stores in

In recent history, BestBuy has been implementing surviving mechanisms rather than growth and expansion strategies. However, this seems to change. BestBuy is implementing a progressive business strategy to withstand the e-commerce storm and prevent the fate of Sears Holdings.

Richard M. Schulze founded Best Buy with business partner James Wheeler when they opened “Sound of Music,” an audio specialty store located in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1966. In 1967 Sound of Music acquired Kencraft Hi-Fi Company and Bergo Company, which led to a second and third store opening near the University of Minnesota and in downtown Minneapolis. The Sound of Music ended its first year with gross sales of $173,000(USD). In 1969 Sound of Music stock was first traded as a publicly held company and in 1970 they hit the $1 million mark in annual revenues. In 1983, Sound of Music’s board of directors approved a new corporate name: Best Buy Co., Inc. The name resembled its marketing strategy: Whatever the product, it

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