Comments on: How Circuit City could steal market share from Best Buy

By: ChoppyTeeth

ChoppyTeeth — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:16:21 +0000

LIke Korbin, I am also an employee at Best Buy. I am at one of the flagship stores and have been there for almost a year. Your alligation that Best Buy does not have customer reviews online is completely false. After you select a product on their site there are reviews after the specs of the product.

Bubba makes a great point that if you are too much of a busy asshole that your not even going to be an informed consumer you really have no room to bitch. Honestly how hard is it to research this for 10 minutes online so that you can just walk into a store and find you product and leave. Or why not even call into a Best Buy and ask a sales operator before you come in? There are plenty of reasonable ways to get around not being assisted in 10 minutes.

Sales Specialists do their best to stack their customers and even if they arent going to be with them soon enough make some sort of contact within 30 seconds. Best Buy is about giving each customer the complete solution, end to end, and sometimes this takes a while.

And if you are thinking that if CC puts some personal shopping assistants (hand held devices) in their stores they will return to their successful status in the electronic consumer world? Im pretty sure as of 10/10/08 their stock is a 0.42. There isnt much this company can do at this point, it is slowly hemorrhaging.

Best But is now international, something CC couldnt possibly imagine doing. Stores in Canada, China, and even Expansion to Europe. So suck it Markus you are obviously an idiot if you cant figure any of this out yourself.

By: korbin

korbin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:26:30 +0000

Being employed at Best Buy for the past several months now and being a tech geek since i was 8 i feel i can somewhat address your rant here… From an employee standpoint, it’s difficult to give each and every customer that walks through our door a personal customer experience(which is what is taught and aimed for in all Best Buy stores with an approach they call CAREplus)… It’s my job to be up to date on customer reviews on all products (which is offered) and even customer reviews for each and every department in each store… Best Buy is a high consumer-rated company. we take pride in this. and it’s my sincerest apologies that you did not get help that one day. Perhaps it’s even several days or just the store you go to in which you received poor service. this is experienced industry wide though.

Being a consumer pre-best buy and while outside of work i do demand prompt, friendly, and knowledgeable service. Yeah, all of us demand it but do not receive it every retail business visit.

Having said all that, i do not believe Circuit City is really going to overtake or even come close with Best Buy in the near future in service or market share. Best Buy continues to lead the way(as it always has since the name change in 1983) in the consumer electronics retail market with its company goals and vision. Let’s face it. Best Buy was the first retailer to sell DVD. First to go totally anti-analog and totally digital. Best Buy decides to promote Blu-Ray and leads Toshiba to drop the pursuit of HD DVD competing high definition disc technology.

By: Markus

Markus — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 05:01:02 +0000

Thank you for your insightful point of view bubba.

By: bubba

bubba — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:22:43 +0000

And don’t say, “you lost my sale”. I don’t lose anything. I get a break.

By: bubba

bubba — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:21:41 +0000

hey hey, heres an idea. Instead of waiting for someone to take your hand and tell you whats good and whats not, do some research on those products. you know, do that thing called reading, artards. You people cry when you think the employee has screwed you over with a sale but when you dont have someone to help you because you don’t take 20 seconds on the net to look you cry even louder. if you don’t trust us then actually do something for yourself (yes i werk at a large retail store). and omg people RTFM (google it if you’re too stupid to know that too)

By: Markus

Markus — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:49:40 +0000

Thanks for commenting Alex, but the issue is that often times the associates are way too busy so you lose the sale altogether.

There is a certain percentage of your customer base that does not need (or want) hand holding.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:26:34 +0000

While it would be convenient, and yes, very helpful to us associates; I’m willing to bet that neither CC or BBY will do anything of the sorts.

They want associates to engage you, because associates, as real people, are easier to relate to and can more successfully sell you drivers–that means installs and service plans. Now I’m not saying that these associates are trying to sell you things you don’t need (at least not CC); they’re moreso helping you find out what you do need. Intangible things are very commonly overlooked by the customer, and end up causing frusteration. In the end, this reduces returns as well. Many a computer I have seen returned because the person caught some virus or some spyware and got frusterated with it.

Offering drivers on price tags, in ads, or by “electronic helpy thingy”, simply doesn’t and hasn’t ever worked.