Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
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Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#2Someone at Reddit pointed out something interesting, in response to a different article covering much of the same information.
Back when Circuit City was around, Best Buy was aggressively responding to Circuit City opening new stores by trying hard to put a Best Buy near that Circuit City. They would do this even if there was already a Best Buy within a few miles of that location.
Now that Circuit City is gone, Best Buy is left with quite a few stores that really have no reason to exist--they are too close to another Best Buy. These are a major contribution to the list of stores they are closing.
Closing these stores is not necessarily a sign of trouble.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#3Maybe they should charge a membership fee, like Costco, and sell their products close to cost. Especially once Amazon has to start paying sales tax, this might be enough to make it work.
Although, I had a gift card or something which required I make a $25 purchase (batteries) in person at a Best Buy, and the experience was horrible. I'd pay 1.2-1.5x as much to buy from Amazon and not have to deal with an icky store, obnoxious salespeople, and painfully slow checkout process.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#4Maybe they should charge a membership fee, like Costco, and sell their products close to cost. Especially once Amazon has to start paying sales tax, this might be enough to make it work. Although, I had a gift card or something which required I make a $25 purchase (batteries) in person at a Best Buy, and the experience was horrible. I'd pay 1.2-1.5x as much to buy from Amazon and not have to deal with an icky store,…
Amazon charges sales tax in NYC, and I still prefer them to Best Buy. The problem is that Best Buy never stocks high-end items, only overpriced low-end items. So there is just no point in visiting unless I want to pay $60 for a shitty USB cable, which I never do :)
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#5Someone at Reddit pointed out something interesting, in response to a different article covering much of the same information. Back when Circuit City was around, Best Buy was aggressively responding to Circuit City opening new stores by trying hard to put a Best Buy near that Circuit City. They would do this even if there was already a Best Buy within a few miles of that location. Now that Circuit City is gone, Best…
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Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#6This is an interesting example of how disruptive technology is. E-commerce is just too powerful a force and the low costs and ease of use will soon demolish our conceptions of what a retail store should be. With rising gas prices, no one wants to drive to a store, spend time searching for products, and be subject to annoying taxes and price hikes that B&M need to have to profit. It's an interesting but scary proposition because as more stores close down and jobs are displaced to programmers/web developers/etc, you get a pool of uneducated workers who saturate the employment pool with good work experience. This leads to lower and lower wages due to obvious excess supply and, well, you know how that goes. This is truly a scary transition that will become more commonplace in the coming years. There will be an uptick in jobs for people like us, but most people, even college students now, have no idea how to do much more than load memes in a "internet explorer thingy firefox". An even scarier question is when will E-commerce no longer need an abundance of highly paid programmers to build their infrastructure? I fear Amazon has nailed the proper way to shop online and their template is just that, a template. Wordpress killed the idea of a unique blog. Everyone can have a wonderful looking site and have no clue how anything works. When everyone can be extraordinary and stand out, no one stands out.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#7Maybe they should charge a membership fee, like Costco, and sell their products close to cost. Especially once Amazon has to start paying sales tax, this might be enough to make it work. Although, I had a gift card or something which required I make a $25 purchase (batteries) in person at a Best Buy, and the experience was horrible. I'd pay 1.2-1.5x as much to buy from Amazon and not have to deal with an icky store,…
Amazon charges sales tax in NYC, and I still prefer them to Best Buy. The problem is that Best Buy never stocks high-end items, only overpriced low-end items. So there is just no point in visiting unless I want to pay $60 for a shitty USB cable, which I never do :)
You just explained it perfectly for me -- Best Buy is CompUSA, just on a curve 5-8 years behind it.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#8Pretty soon, the only end-customer things in cities will be coffee, restaurants, bars, yoga, and gyms. And Apple stores, apparently.
It seems nostalgically sad, but there's also going to be lots of space for doing "something" locally. I don't know what though.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#9Pretty soon, the only end-customer things in cities will be coffee, restaurants, bars, yoga, and gyms. And Apple stores, apparently. It seems nostalgically sad, but there's also going to be lots of space for doing "something" locally. I don't know what though.
And Apple stores, apparently.
And maybe stores for other brands, provided they will come up with a way to offer a similar experience as that of an Apple store.
Re: Best Buy: Grasping at Straws
#10This is an interesting example of how disruptive technology is. E-commerce is just too powerful a force and the low costs and ease of use will soon demolish our conceptions of what a retail store should be. With rising gas prices, no one wants to drive to a store, spend time searching for products, and be subject to annoying taxes and price hikes that B&M need to have to profit. It's an interesting but scary proposit…
This is a little too post-apocalyptic. I think the biggest thing you miss in your argument is that a lot of human beings don't really want to do the same thing as all the other humans. There will never be a point where Amazon is the only option for E-commerce. Wordpress will never be the only blog software option. There are millions of people who won't go to Walmart simply for the fact that it's Walmart.
Honestly, do you think there will be point when we say, "Welp, we've written all the software. Now what?".