Best Buy New In-Store Pick up Program

In order to catch on the upcoming holiday buying season, Best Buy just announced its optimization of “buy online, pick up in store” system. It basically explains that now customers could buy any in stores in items  on their web site, and company guarantee they will merchandises available for picking up after customers made purchase successfully through web site. Best Buy also points out they could ship the out-of-stock products to any retail store where customers feel more comfortable to pick up. That would be definitely without additional charge.

To promoting this new fast-picking-up program, Best Buy, ranking top 10 of the internet retailers in the US, is catching up its closest competitors such as Circuit City’s 24 Minutes pick up program ( Now is acquired by Best Buy), and Sears 5 Minutes guarantee which was just released recently.

Just like Sears’s picking-up strategy, Best buy made customers who purchase on line, and then s/he could name someone else to pick up the goods as long as showing the government issued ID and the order number. Following this option, Best Buy also canceled the pervious restriction of presenting the credit cards that is used in purchasing in order to pick up the order.  

To implement Best buy’s advance pick-up system, it also gives customers an option that s/he can even pick up the orders to the nearest warehouse. What does this option attract consumers is that if they pick directly from its warehouses, it avoids some delivery charges and delivery schedule conflict for large items such as home appliances. It also saves customers a lot of time on getting orders because some appliances must be shipped to a store from warehouse.

Best Buy says this new-launched program is called Store Pickup Plus. This is only available for on-line purchasing, as their business strategy to increase market shares toward online retailer. Store Pickup Plus helps Best buy build more reputation from saving customers money of delivery, and time to receive their orders. It also helps customers to reduce any unnecessary worry about package delivery, but building more confidence that products will be available.

Amazon partner with Best Buy

Amazon.com, the leader of US online retailers, gives an image to their customers that the happiest way of shopping, now is open their business to some traditional retailers, such as Best Buy. They have made a contract that put Amazon’s Kindle e-readers on sale in best buy’s retail stores for the holiday and long weekends buying season. This arrangement was just released recently, and bust buy’s customers would be glad to see the best-selling E-reader on the market from Amazon is now available at their neighbor stores ; the larger size of Kindle, called DX will would be displayed at other later days. But, Best Buy already carries the closest competitor, Sony E-Readers and best buy is the only authorized dealer of Barnes & Noble that offers that company's Nook device.

The reason amazon partner with Best Buy is quite clear; I believe Amazon attempt to attract potential customers to access the device, the top-selling e-reader on the market more easier. Amazon doesn't give out the sales report as usual, but the business researcher suggests the Kindle is doing relatively well. For Amazon, however, the cooperation with Best Buy is trying pump up Kindle sales in the offline market, especially target on those people who don’t buy goods online, which contributes a significant segmentation for the company’s future operation.

The decision to offer Amazon-branded and owned device in the biggest electronic retail store in the US is a major movement for the company, and a sign to indicate that the company is no more  ignore those non-internet buyers in the market for their best-selling device. And of course, they are expanding the market in such competitive environment. Moreover, Amazon released a cheaper, WiFi-only model Kindle along with the start of international. This model is cheaper than the regular one, shows that amazon aims at students as to accrue more shares in back-to-school seasons.  All of these strategies are some ideas to get as many people using Kindles and love in it, and ensuring Amazon's DRMed content as quickly as possible.

Base on this perspective, the keep in partner with other retail stores are understandable. Product’s prices drops reflect the low-end model into what should be considered a big attractive thing for many people, especially during the recession. While for those browse Amazon.com rarely, lowing prices are also probably to make the Kindle look very good in comparison to the competitors it will be put on display in one store together.

Forecasting: Online Retail Sales Will Grow To $250 Billion By 2014

Online retail sales aren’t growing at the torrid pace they once were, but they continue to grow steadily. Forrester Research put out a new five-year forecast today predicting that e-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales.
In Western Europe, Forrester expects a slightly faster 11 percent growth rate for online retail sales, going from $93 billion (68 billion Euros) in 2009 to $156 billion (114.5 billion Euros) in 2014. Forrester’s estimates exclude online sales of autos, travel, and prescription drugs.
Some other stats from the U.S. forecast:

• e-commerce sales will represent 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. by 2014, up from 6 percent in 2009
• In 2009, 154 million people in the U.S. bought something online, or 67 percent of the online population (4 percent more than in 2008)
• Three product categories (computers, apparel, and consumer electronics) represented more than 44 percent of online sales($67.6 billion)  in 2009

While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “Web-influenced.” It also estimates that online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.
Yet there is a lot of room for improvement in helping consumers go from doing online research to in-store purchases. Only 61 percent of consumers who cross over from one to the other are satisfied with their buying experience, compared to 82 percent for those who end up buying online. Forrester draws the lesson that retailers need to do a better job appealing to online consumers in their physical stores. I come to a different conclusion: avoid going to real stores and buy online whenever you can. You will be happier.