Overview of the Website Best Buy - Case Study Example

Index Overview of the Website.......................................................................................Pag.2 Business Objectives and Business Models …...................................................Pag.3 Audience Analysis..................................................................................................Pag. 5 Web Analysis............................................................................................................Pag.7 Richard Waller 7 Points Check List.........................................................Pag.8 Competitor Analysis..............................................................................................Pag.11 Summary.................................................................................................................Pag.13 Recommendation………………………………………………………………..Pag. 13 www.bestbuy.com Overview of the Website Best Buy is a retailer of consumer electronics which deals in home office products, entertainment equipments and software, appliances and other services. Best Buy operates in two major segments, the one is Domestic and another one is International. It is a global family of brands and an industry leader with more than 40 years of history. Bestbuy.com is a very trustworthy website among online consumers which offers a large variety of products and services. They have a punch line - 'Thousands of Possibilities. Get Yours.', and this is exactly what they are offering to customer though website. It serves all kinds of price sensitive customers whether customer is interested in saving money with a special promotion, or finding the hottest items flying off the shelves of your local stores, BestBuy.com has all kinds of inventory and selection which you could possibly need. (SUMMARY OF BESY BUY CO INC n.d.) There are a large number of products by categories mentioned on the website like Electronics, Cameras, Computers, Home Appliances, and Gifts etc. All these have various subcategories of products which are mentioned on websites. One can choose all the products of same range in same product category. One can roll over the images and get the required information. This is one of the top differences that exist between BestBuy.com and other similar shopping websites. This website also works on providing promotional schemes, discounts, and reward points to the customers. Bestbuy.com provides a very good shopping experience; one can see a product in 3D dimension to better get a feel of the look of the product. Best buy also featured services such as the Geek Squad which will help to find the electronics one need. In other services bestbuy.com provides a Digital Music Store, the Sirius Satellite Radio, Mobile Installation and lots more. Bestbuy.com is a great place to visit and buy for the right products at the right price. Best Buy resembles other online shopping sites, but it has some special features that other lack, such as the design and help section. Best Buy is far better and beyond the nation's leading retailer of consumer electronics, consistently outperforming its peers. The company's product mix includes digital and analog TVs, home theater systems, personal computers, entertainment software. (SUMMARY OF BESY BUY CO INC n.d.) Business Model, Business Objective The business model of BestNuy.com is similar to Business to Consumers (B2C) model. They define their business as meeting the wants and needs of their consumers. They believe that their assets and resources position them to solve customer problems and queries. They are building strong continuing and emerging relationships with companies like Apple, Dell and CPW; and all of the other mutually enriching business relationships that their people continue to establish and develop wherever they go around the world. Best Buy.com also have websites for their brands like BestBuy.com, BestBuy.ca, BestBuy.com.cn, espanol.BestBuy.com and BestBuyMobile.com, CarphoneWarehouse.com, Five-Star.cn, FutureShop.ca, GeekSquad.com, GeekSquad.ca, MagnoliaAV.com, Napster.com, PacificSales.com, PhoneHouse.com and Speakeasy.net. They generate significant positive cash flows from their websites. Business Model The business models which have been identified are: 1. Customer consultant – A. Best buy provides a service where to get rid of their queries, customer can directly contact to the consultant over website and then they will assist them regarding their queries. This is giving more popularity to it. (BESTBUY.COM n.d.) B. Advertising Space – BEstbuy.com is providing a lot of space for advertisement, companies are posting their ads in flash forms and banner forms. This is one of the main revenue generators for the company. C. In its B2C approach, bestbuy is trying to serve a lot of consumer segments and consumer can find that on the basis of the range of the product he or she would like to buy. Best buy is quite successful in this approach. The Business objective of Best Buy is to transform Best Buy into a customer-driven and customer centric organization which has a focus on enhancing their customers’ experience and enjoyment of technology. In 2010, their future growth plans and strategies revolve around four basic business priorities. These four priorities will create opportunities and will make them able to recover from this economic crisis. These are – 1. Enhancing and growing market share 2. Connected digital solutions 3. International growth and 4. Efficient and effective organization Best Buy is one of the online retailers who use high-tech tracking software to analyze and then respond to customer purchasing patterns. Audience Analysis Audiences of Best buy are clubbed into different segments and which worked well with the business strategy and segmentation of BestBuy.com. They believe in customer centric approach. As part of its customer centricity initiative, audience of BestBuy.com can be segmented into five customer segments which provide significant new growth opportunities. These segments are mentioned below- 1. The First is affluent professional segment who wants the buy best technology and entertainment experience and who demands excellent service. These are not price sensitive customer. 2. The second is focused, active, younger male customer segment who wants the latest technology and entertainment equipments. 3. The third is family man who wants technology that improves his life – the practical adopter of technology and entertainment. 4. The fourth is busy suburban mom who wants to enrich her children’s lives with technology and entertainment. and 5. The last one is small business customer who can use Best Buy’s product solutions and services to enhance the profitability of his or her business. Best buy is expanding their take on customer centricity and it is to be adapted by every Best Buy brand to serve one or more dominant customer segments shopping. To support its customer centricity approach and business model, Best Buy is teaching its employees to focus on specific customers rather segments and demands than just product categories. The company has also decentralized decision-making to the stores people to provide a better customer experience. (Heller 2005) To review its revenue sources, store associates measure the results of all investments in terms of growth in particular segment revenue and return on invested capital (ROC). Becoming a customer-centric organization Best Buy requires taking a full advantage of the talent and creativity of every Best Buy employee and stakeholder working in or for Best Buy. Best Buy is planning to invest in employees training to develop capabilities that enable its customer centricity model and it is also investing in customer relationship management systems. The company anticipates revenue and gross profit gains from the customer centricity stores for recovering the cost of investment and investment. . They define customer centricity through their three core philosophies – 1. Inviting their employees to contribute their unique ideas and experiences in service of customers as good as possible 2. Different treatment to different customers and honoring their differences and 3. Meeting customers unique demands Web Analysis Under this, I am going to analyze the website of best buy with the help of RICHARD WALLER’s seven point check list. (WALLER n.d.)This list includes various heads which will produce a result about how useful and informative this website is. The seven checklist points are mentioned below. 1. Good first Impression: Best Buy website has a vey simple URL which is easy to remember and it is very easy to search this website because it only contains the name of the organization. On the home page information appears in the flash mode as well as text mode. The title is easily visible. I had a very good first impression of the website and it was excellent with the content and images. Although there was blue color in excess but it was quite soothing to eyes. The website has the ability to attract attention and retain the customer. There are four check points in this like – simple address URL, See Title immediately, content in 8 seconds and Attractive. Best Buy.com meats 3 out of 4, content in 8 seconds depend on the speed of the internet, although site is not much heavy. 2. Friendly Image: Best buy website provides a user friendly website where it is possible to find any information which ever is needed; it can be related to the company, its contacts, customer feedbacks, company’s performance figures etc. One can download and print the website pages and flash. Under this point, there are 7 check points and best buy meet 5 points. These points are – easy to read, images are useful, printer friendly, technically sound and 640 display friendly. (BESTBUY.COM n.d.) Figure 1 - friendly image The above image shows that it contains very good and clear image quality and proper links. 3. Easy Navigation: Bestbuy.com is one of the easiest website to navigate, there are different product categories which are clearly defined like TV and Video, Cars, Audio, computers etc. One can go to these option easily and its give a proper direction to whole shopping experience. Under easy navigation point there are 4 checklist and best buy meets all of them. These are clear structure, clear text links, consistent and search tool and site map. The below show image gives a better understanding. Figure 2 - clear structure and categories 4. Useful Content: Bestbuy.com provides information regarding finance and company’s performance. Best buy is good in terms on quality of the content, objectives are well defined and as per the promotional schemes and new product arrivals, the website get regular update. They remove the out dated content from the website. The new and undated content gives a better experience to the customer in spite of giving irritation. There are 7 check lists in this point and best buy meets all of these. These are clear objective, clear target audience, clear target area, quality content, regular updates, useful links etc. 5. Appropriate for Audience: Bestbuy.com has a link on the website which is useful for the people who does not know English. There is a link provided on the top of the website – Espanol. There is a vey easy step for processing an order on best buy.com. It is useful for disables, here disables means people who does not know that particular language. Best buy meets all the three check points in this category also. (http://www.bestbuy.com/ n.d.) 6. Clear Contact Information: There is a link given at the bottom of the homepage which is useful for contact information. There are various other links are given below which are the other popular brands of bestbuy.com. Contact information is mentioned on each and every page. In this category also, bestbuy fulfills all the points like – branding on every page, contact on every page, name, address and phone no. 7. Good for Search Engines: This is the last category of seven points; bestbuy.com provides a search option by name and category on the home page. It provides an ease to the customer. The below pics shows the search links – Figure 3 - links for search options On the basis of above evaluation we can say that best buy meets around 90% of the points which is requires for providing a best experience to the customer. Competitors Analysis Although best buy has beaten the competition but still there are a lot many players like Sears, Apple, Amazon, Wal mart, radio shock, comusa.com etc. I would like to do SWOT analysis to understand the major strengths of best buy. (Best Buy Brand SWOT Analysis - Using Open Principles Test n.d.) Porter's Five Forces: High barriers to Entry Large number of competitors Requirement of huge amount of money for initial investment Economies of scale and warehousing management, focus on supply chain management Advanced technologies and innovative system. The main two competitors for best buy are radioshock.com and comusa.com. Here Best Buy strengths are - In particular it is important to find out the elements which are competitive advantages of best buy and it allows it to satisfy customer needs better than the competition? For an example - Geek Squad provides Best Buy with better technical customer service then, say, Sears or online competitors like Tiger or CDW. The customer centric approach make best buy unique and above competition. They are not focusing on providing at low cost just like wal mart. Here I can say that store designs and lay outs which affects the visual merchandise is a major weakness for best buy, but it has already started working on it. National attitude toward protectionism could mean import restrictions or tariffs on imported products and it is raising costs at Best Buy. (swot analysis n.d.) Summary To conclude, I would like to say that its customer centric approach gives it a competitive edge over competition and that is why it is able to provide a unique experience to its customers. Along with the service quality, the product quality and prices are also good and it provides value for money. As per the evaluation through Richard seven point scales, we can say that the website is good enough for attracting customers and retaining them with its quality. Recommendations It is very important to get a sustainable competitive advantage, although bestbuy.com has it but it needs to improve it and work on it to make a unique selling proposition for best buy. It can be done through understanding consumers preferences through website trackers and click meter. It needs to continue work on its customer centric approach and make the organization friendlier and technologically savvy. (Best Buy uses tracking software to analyze customer patterns 2009) Bibliography Best Buy Brand SWOT Analysis - Using Open Principles Test. http://barryjudge.com/best-buy-brand-swot-analysis-using-open-principles-test (accessed MAY` 6, 2009). Best Buy uses tracking software to analyze customer patterns. feb 9, 2009. http://www.minnpost.com/businessagenda/2009/02/09/6535/best_buy_uses_tracking_software_to_analyze_customer_patterns (accessed may 6, 2009). BESTBUY.COM. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=page&entryURLType=&entryURLID=&categoryId=cat10011&contentId=1043363533588&id=cat12098 (accessed MAY 5, 2009). Heller, Laura. Customer-centric model future focus at Best Buy. April 25, 2005. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FNP/is_8_44/ai_n13665054/ (accessed may 6, 2009). http://www.bestbuy.com/. http://www.bestbuy.com/. SUMMARY OF BESY BUY CO INC. http://biz.yahoo.com/e/090429/bby10-k.html (accessed MAY 6, 2009). swot analysis. http://www.oppapers.com/subjects/swot-analysis-of-lg-company-page1.html (accessed MAY 4, 2009). WALLER, RICHARD. Seven Point checklist. http://www.waller.co.uk/usability16.htm (accessed may 6, 2009). Read More