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 January 2019, Amazon.com Inc (Amazon) became the most valuable company in the world, above Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet (Google). Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO was now the world’s richest man. On January 31st, 2019, Amazon announced 2018 operating profits of $12.4 billion, up from $178 million in 2014, on sales of $232 billion, up from $89 billion four years earlier. The shareholders expressed their satisfaction, but not all were happy with Amazon’s meteoric rise. Many traditional retailers in the United States were going bankrupt, while major competitors such as Walmart and Best Buy were forced to invest aggressively in online retailing to prevent their market share from eroding. Every retail sector appeared to be under threat, fueling anxieties that Amazon and America’s other tech giants were becoming too big and powerful. In the United States, Amazon was drawing criticism from across the political spectrum, with calls for it to be broken up. Meanwhile, the European Union was also investigating its practices. Did Amazon’s success threaten its very existence?

In August 2019, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The first major storm of protest followed the surprise election of Donald Trump as President of the United States on November 8, 2016; many put the blame at the door of fake news stories served up on Facebook’s Trending News Feed. Zuckerberg dismissed these claims as “crazy,” asserting that Facebook was a technology company, not a media company. In 2017, it was revealed that a Russian intelligence team had purchased 3,000 political ads on Facebook in an attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Then, in March 2018, the public learned that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, had used 87 million Facebook profiles obtained from scraping the site to affect the election. As a result, Zuckerberg was called to Congress to testify. In early 2019, Facebook announced the company was to merge its Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms and share data but that this data would be more secure. The claim was greeted with much skepticism. To explain the move, Zuckerberg published a blog post, changing the company’s mission from making the world more open to achieving privacy-focused communications on its platform. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to struggle with fake news while expanding its service offering. In June 2019, it announced it was to launch Libra, a new global cryptocurrency for its 2.5 billion users around the world. In early September 2019, it launched Facebook Dating, which promised “[to help] you start meaningful relationships through things you have in common, like interests, events and groups.” That same month, Facebook announced that it bought a New York–based start-up called CTRL-labs, which was working on developing a wristband that allowed people to control their electronic devices with brain signals. There was little doubt of the scale of Zuckerberg’s ambitions. But, ongoing investigations into Facebook’s privacy violations and calls to break up the company pointed to more fundamental issues.

Faculty & Research

Reinventing Best Buy

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author

Faculty & Research

Reinventing Best Buy

Abstract

Citation:

Related Work

About the Author

More from the Author