Reinventing Best Buy

John R. Wells; Gabriel  Ellsworth

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2016 (Revised May 2018)

Reinventing Best Buy

by John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Abstract

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast to four years of declining comparable-store sales from 2010 through 2013. The stock price rose 17% in March, and on April 20, 2017, it surpassed $50 for the first time since January 2008. When CEO Hubert Joly took over in September 2012, Best Buy was losing share to Amazon.com, which was encouraging consumers to view products at Best Buy and other physical stores and then buy them for a lower price online, a practice known as “showrooming.” Undaunted, Joly had encouraged the practice, convinced that it presented an opportunity to sell to customers as long as Best Buy’s prices were competitive. Joly had committed the company to a multi-channel strategy in North America and exited struggling international operations. Operating margins had increased as a result, but growth was still proving elusive. In early 2017, Joly announced that his “Renew Blue” turnaround effort was complete and that he was now intent on creating the New Blue. Would the new strategy be enough to stop Amazon’s advances?

Keywords: Best Buy; Hubert Joly; Renew Blue; showrooming; webrooming; e-commerce; E-Commerce strategy; online retail; multichannel retailing; omnichannel; marketplaces; turnaround; consumer electronics; consumer electronics accessories; appliances; stores-within-stores; store experience; store size; store pickup; store management; delivery; delivery models; Amazon; Amazon.com; Pricing strategy; Business Subsidiaries; Business Units; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Music Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Theater Entertainment; Price; Profit; Revenue; Geographic Scope; Multinational Firms and Management; Business History; Cost; Selection and Staffing; Reports; Technological Innovation; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Human Capital; Leading Change; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Media; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Distribution Channels; Infrastructure; Product; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Public Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Programs; Groups and Teams; Sales; Salesforce Management; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Technology; Hardware; Information Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Search Technology; Software; Web; Web Sites; Wireless Technology; Resource Allocation; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Video Game Industry; United States; Minnesota; Minneapolis; Saint Paul; St. Paul;

Language: English

Format: Print

38 pages

Educators Purchase

Citation:

Wells, John R., and Gabriel Ellsworth. "Reinventing Best Buy." Harvard Business School Case 716-455, March 2016. (Revised May 2018.)

In October 2017, Maurice Nessim, President of WesternGeco, a business unit of Schlumberger, faced a difficult decision. In the face of falling oil prices and increasing pressure on costs, did it make sense to sell off the company’s specialized fleet of seismic survey vessels and focus on data processing and interpretation of survey results? How would this affect the company’s competitive advantage? And what view might the company’s parent, Schlumberger, take? As the largest oilfield services provider in the world, did it make sense for Schlumberger to exit offshore seismic services?

In October 2019, Dan Macklin, the newly-appointed chief executive of Salary Finance Inc., was weighing his options for the future of the business. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were repaid through automatic payroll deductions. Taking repayments directly from salary, and collecting those repayments in one transaction from the employer, dramatically reduced costs, saving employees large amounts of interest when compared to market alternatives like credit cards or payday lenders.
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Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2020

Celata Bioinnovations

John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In December 2019, Jon Hu (HBS ‘19) and Dr. Samantha Dale Strasser, co-founders of Celata Bioinnovations, were raising $1 million to launch their company. They had founded Celata less than six months earlier with the aim of redefining the drug discovery process. Celata’s platform used novel data types and a unique data integration process to generate hypotheses about proteins that were involved in the formation and progression of disease. They believed the platform was better and faster at identifying actionable biological targets, increasing the speed of discovery and reducing the chances of failure, promising to lower costs and bring drugs to market more quickly. Their platform had achieved proof of concept during Strasser’s PhD research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), when it helped identify and validate a target related to Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in mouse models. However, full validation wouldn’t come until their platform was used to develop a drug that successfully treated a disease in humans, a process that could take several years. In the first instance, Celata’s platform was best suited to identify targets for cancers, inflammatory diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, which collectively presented a global market opportunity of over $200 billion. However, Hu and Strasser were debating which opportunities to pursue. Should they try to improve the efficacy of current drugs or go for brand new opportunities, indications for which there were no solutions on the market? And if they focused on the latter, should they just look for large market opportunities or include “orphan” diseases, for which there was a relatively small market? Should they look for small-molecule drug candidates or include large-molecule biologics in their search? And where should they operate in the drug development pipeline? At one extreme, they could sell potential drug candidates to established pharmaceutical companies; at the other, they could “go full pharma” and build a new pharmaceutical company themselves.

Keywords: drug development; drug discovery; Drug Trials; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmaceutical Company; Pharmaceuticals; therapeutics; Biologics; biotech; biotechnology; biopharmacy company; biochemistry; technology commercialization; technology companies; Drug Testing; Startup; start-up; Startups; start-ups; Startup financing; strategic decision making; strategic decisions; strategic evolution; FDA; Food and Drug Administration; clinical trials; disease management; market attractiveness; Market entry; market opportunities; Health Disorders; Technological Innovation; Technology; Commercialization; Business Startups; Finance; Decision Making; Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Opportunities; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry;