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Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

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Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#121

Post by scarface74 »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #81
scarface74 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never buy a laptop from Best Buy, Amazon, or any other third party retailer. Consumer PC laptops are like most Android phones -- full of third party crapware. I only buy either the business line of laptops from Dell or HP or I'll buy from the Microsoft Store - either online or physical store.

I bought my last Macbook Pro from Best Buy. I had just moved and still had a coupon. No crapware to be found.

Apple products never have third party crapware. I was referring to Windows computers

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#122

Post by reaperducer »

chuckkir wrote: post #112
kop316 wrote: post #10

I can't speak for the Geek Squad (as I have never needed to use them), but they price match to Amazon (and several other online stores), and will generally have what I am looking for (at least for consumer electronics). I know that I will get it that day (vs. Amazon's "two day shipping" that regularly turned into three or four days) at an Amazon price, it will certainly NOT be a counterfeit, and I don't have to give…

The flip side of this is that they charge $50 more than Apple for an iPhone. Why make all your customers demand a price match for something so widely known? It seems like it would irk most people in the hopes of extracting a few bucks from a handful of folks.

Why make all your customers demand a price match for something so widely known?

A lot of people don't have access to Apple Stores. There are twice as many Best Buy stores in the U.S. (1,001 vs. 500ish).

And unless you're super-nerd, or super-cheap, you aren't going to drop $1k on a phone online.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#123

Post by danso »

taeric wrote: post #9

Why should it be dead? Poor management and bad money practices of some other competitors does not mean the retail segment is dead. Just that over leveraged companies are risky. No?

With the exception of Apple, Costco, IKEA, and New York-scale independents (e.g. BH and the Strand) brick-and-mortar seems to be on a consistent trend of dying. Departmwnt stores like Sears, Macys, and JC Penney’s. Even Nordstrom is running into hurdles as it attempts to go private. Entertainment chains in particular have been dying — Virgin, Tower Records, Borders, Barnes and Nobles. Among BB‘s direct competitors, who else is around except for Fry’s? Circuit City and CompUSA have long since died. To blame it all on “bad money practices” seems simplistic, as if there weren’t intractable costs that caused them to turn to bad practices.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#124

Post by WillPostForFood »

ahi wrote: post #87
paulgb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost bought a calendar on Prime today only to see that it "usually ships in 1-2 months(!)" Increasingly it feels like as a Prime subscriber I pay for shipping twice: once with my prime subscription, and a second time with the shipping cost built in to the price compared to other retailers. I ended up getting an equivalent item from Target, which ended up being cheaper even without "free" shipping.

This is true even on Amazon. Very often the Prime price is exactly the same as their third-party price + shipping. This will be my last year of Prime.

I see it on Amazon, but it is interesting to look it at a macro level. If you are a third party selling on amazon without offering prime shipping, you have to cut your price to equal or lower to the amazon price or else no one would ever buy from you. So it is more that prime is forcing third party prices down to compete than Amazon double charging prime users.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#125

Post by xemdetia »

mistersquid wrote: post #26

Yesterday, I went into a Best Buy for the first time in ages because I needed a USB A to USB micro b cable and I was on the road in a small city (fewer than 50K). I was surprised by how clean, well-organized, and well-staffed it was. When I asked where such cables were (not having yet left the front of the store because, not having a lock with me, I needed to stow my bicycle up front), the associate on the floor came…

The thing I find Best Buy really useful for is things that actually need to fit you or do not have a standardized size or really varying quality like headphones or mice. I get attached to models of both of those items and eventually they get deprecated and I have to find new ones and the Amazon experience just doesn't work for those things unless you want to buy 3 and return 2 that don't work for you.

I also feel like it's the same with phones- you can can go and see if it feels right in your hand or if you want the XL model or something and since it's not a mobile phone store primarily it's less apparent pressure then the dedicated stores for those sorts of things.

I think they do have a place going forward if they keep the experience up, the other big box places you can buy electronics such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Staples end up just being depressing supermarket-esque experiences with half the products on the shelves being out of date by 3 or more years or just being the absolute bottom of the barrel in quality. It really feels like a struggle for other stores to carry decent quality middle of the road products, but Best Buy does well in that aspect.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#126

Post by roter »

actionowl wrote: post #82

I like going in to touch things. I often buy things that I wouldn't online because I can physically hold them and try them out.

Agree, with one caveat. When viewing via the website, a large fraction of items are "Online Only" through their 3rd party resellers. I'd like to touch but can't. Note: Canadian experience, may be different down south.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#128

Post by bachmeier »

throwawaymath wrote: post #108
MichaelApproved wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like most Americans I order a shitload from Amazon. I do too but can we say "most" Americans? Are there any stats available on their customers? I wonder, how many Americans have purchased at least one thing on Amazon? How many have in the past year? What's the average spend per customer per year?

Here you go: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/06/17/sixty-four... tl;dr: As of June 2017, 64% of American households had Amazon Prime. 43% of all American dollars spent online are spent at Amazon.

Hate to be that guy, but I have Amazon Prime in my household because my wife uses it just enough to be worthwhile. She makes only a small percentage of her purchases there, and the others in our household make none.

The 43% figure is more relevant, and that's 43% of a relatively small share of all consumer spending, with much of it being done by a small group of large Amazon customers.

So I don't think it's accurate to say most people buy a shitload of stuff from Amazon.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#129

Post by Bedon292 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #86
gzu wrote: post #12

You really can't beat going into a physical store for a large ticket item purchase. No waiting for shipping, easy to return, viewing the product in store. Recently purchased a MBP from Bestbuy. The first one I received had noticeable back light bleeding near a screen corner. Walked back in the store the next day to return. The process from an online retailer would have taken weeks.

A while back we had a refrigerator die, and I was like "no problem, I'll run to home depot and get one". they could NOT handle it. Everyone seemed annoyed that I wanted to do this. They have refrigerators on the floor but only a few are for sale, and they can do delivery in theory but they didn't seem to know if their delivery guys were available or not. I went over to Lowes next door and it was the same deal. I was…

Yeah I was somewhat surprised when I bought a new washer and dryer. Took my truck to the store so I would have space, get there, and they are like yeah its going to be two weeks for delivery. They keep none of those items on hand, as they are too large. Its all out in a warehouse somewhere else, and they just aren't prepared for someone who wants something now. It makes sense, but is not something I thought about before experiencing it.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#130

Post by dyeje »

gameswithgo wrote: post #86
gzu wrote: post #12

You really can't beat going into a physical store for a large ticket item purchase. No waiting for shipping, easy to return, viewing the product in store. Recently purchased a MBP from Bestbuy. The first one I received had noticeable back light bleeding near a screen corner. Walked back in the store the next day to return. The process from an online retailer would have taken weeks.

A while back we had a refrigerator die, and I was like "no problem, I'll run to home depot and get one". they could NOT handle it. Everyone seemed annoyed that I wanted to do this. They have refrigerators on the floor but only a few are for sale, and they can do delivery in theory but they didn't seem to know if their delivery guys were available or not. I went over to Lowes next door and it was the same deal. I was…

Huh, interesting. I bought a dishwasher a few months ago from Home Depot and it was smooth sailing. Picked the floor model, they pulled the item from the back, we payed, and then they helped us load it into the car.
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