It’s not news to anyone that more people are buying online and less in physical stores. So much that over the years Best Buy has been closing locations and letting go of full time employees to replace them for part time employees. Side note: there was a time that the geek in me, would have loved to have worked there. However the remaining Best Buy locations in my opinion have been going down hill. This is why….
We recently decided to start shopping around for some new speakers for our home. I will admit, we are guilty of buying most of our items online. However like buying a car. TV’s and speakers in my opinion, are just one of those things that really should be seen and test driven before purchasing. So for a purchase like this I wanted to see what was out there, make note of the ones that interested us, go home research and read reviews. Then once we decided we like to buy online to use Rakuten to get any sort of rebate (aka ebates) and will often choose to do in store pickup. So we went to a couple of our local Best Buy stores this weekend.
What happens when you’re one of the only big-box electronic stores still standing? Apparently you stop caring about it’s appearance.
Suggestions
These are my suggestions to Best Buy Store and Department Managers. As your standards appear to be going down…
- Working Floor Models
Have working floor models. We tried several systems that stated they came with sub woofers, however at least 2 or 3 of them were not working correctly. I even went and checked to see if they were hooked up. They appeared to be but no sound was coming from them. - Product Information
Products Tags were often missing. Without the tags you are missing out on information such as pricing, specifications and model numbers. Also the product tags that they did have, the text was so small you couldn’t read it (however I do understand that is more of a corporate decision). Thankfully they have QR codes on their tags you could scan that link to the product on their website to read more information. - Clean Products
A decent amount of their demos were dusty as well as their shelves. Instead of having your employees come over to us 3 or 4 times to ask us if we needed help, which is annoying. Why not have them clean up their stores and then if they see us, they can maybe ask. I do believe that maintaining a clean work space/store is apart of all job descriptions. - Full Shelves
During my time working in retail many years ago I was taught the importance of having stocked shelves. A-lot of their shelves however were empty. How do you expect to sell anything with empty shelves. In my opinion full shelves looks much more appealing even if it’s with overstock. - Product Placement
Walking into our 2nd location on Sunday we found ourselves going down the first row of the home entertainment department to find their out of box items that appeared to have just thrown there. I would think that you wouldn’t want your customers who are willing to potentially spend hundreds/thousands of dollars to see a crappy display of discounted out of box items for sale. I would think those should be placed those towards the back.
Had I thought of writing about this while at the stores, I would have taken pictures. Ok I’m done complaining.
And if you’re wondering if we purchased anything yet. Yes we did buy something from best buy…However we returned it, it was not powerful enough for our setup. We ended up buying from Amazon after all….
