Question

respond to the following either agreeing or disagreeing

Best Buy, as the largest electronics retailer in America, has not always had such a strong position in the marketplace. As recently as 2012, Best Buy was beginning to lose money and many wondered if Best Buy could remain in business. The thought process in 2012 indicated that the big box retailers like Best Buy would go extinct, like the dinosaurs did. Their main rival being the online retailers, namely Amazon, represented the future. (Downes, 2012)

Fast forward to today and Best Buy has indeed survived the last 8 years of stiff competition. This is largely due to Best Buy's wonderful customer service and their best-cost provider strategy. The best-cost provider strategy seeks to increase the value given to customers by satisfying the buyer's expectations while simultaneously exceeding their expectations regarding pricing. This is where their wonderful employees really shine. Best Buy doesn't pay their people a commission, as some other electronics retailers do. This allows Best Buy employees to really focus on the customer and seek to exceed their expectations.

Best Buy provides world class training to their associates, with regards to product knowledge and feature presentations. Every time you walk into a Best Buy, you are greeted and helped by a friendly associate knowledgeable about the products offered.

My wife used to work for Best Buy when she was in college. She still to this day, many days later I might add, says that Best Buy was the best job she ever had. She really enjoyed the atmosphere that Best Buy provided for her as a college student. They offered her full medical and dental benefits as a full time employee. They also offered her college tuition reimbursement once she had been an employee over a year. The only reason she left the company after several years was because the hourly pay for a retail, front line employee, was not enough to support her lifestyle. However, she enjoyed contributing to their best-cost provider strategy all of the days she worked there.

Answer 1

In the present age of online transactions where you can compare the costs and features of goods without physically seeing them and get the most attactive costs by a few clicks of mouse, the strategy adopted by Best Buy is clearly differentiated , that helped it to survive.

Being a brick and mortar organization , Best Buy have some additional costs of maintaing infrastructure as compared to its on line competitor. So the only way to survive in the business is to enhance the cutomer satisfaction during the physical purchase. They trained the sales associates very well so that they understand customers'needs and can present the features of products to a customer in a way to satisfy customer's expectation  and the perceived value of the goods to the customer increase. The customers have a feeling of satisfaction that exceeds the price paid , and this is very unique way the Best Buy operates. They do not pay commission to sales associates, so the sales guys do not have any biasness for high commission products. They understand the customer needs and unbiasedly offer the product that can satisfy the customer the best.

The operating strategy of Best buy is working well, they also offer good health benefits and have some good reimbursement schemes for employees, however , the low hourly pay rate and abesnce of commission may cause dissatisfaction among the sales associates and long term retrntion of perople will be a challenge.

Therefore , it is agreed that the sales strategy opted by Best Buy is unique and effective, but they need to have some focus on retention of taleneted sales associates. The sales associates are the back bone of their operating strategy and they need to retain best talents by offering better pay rates and incentives.