“Best Buy Co. is testing a new turnaround strategy: making its cavernous electronics emporiums look more like Apple Inc.’s sleek retail outlets,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
“The heart of a test store near Best Buy’s headquarters here is a Solution Central help desk, rimmed with chairs and manned by the company’s black-tied Geek Squad,” WSJ reports. “It strongly resembles the Genius Bar at Apple’s stores.”
WSJ reports, “Best Buy’s prototype has taken another cue from Apple, letting customers pay for products in several locations, rather than forcing them into checkout lines at the front of the store.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In a few short years, Best Buy has gone from having to be convinced to carry Apple products to making their stores look and work like Apple’s. At least they’re slightly less humiliated than Microsoft, which not only directly clones Apple Retail Stores but secretly wishes they had Apple products, not just Apple knockoffs, to sell, too.
Apple leads. The rest follow. As usual.
Related articles:
Best Buy founder Schulze abruptly resigns, explores options for sale of his 20% stake – June 7, 2012
Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn call it quits – April 10, 2012
Best Buy posts $1.7b loss, to close 50 U.S. stores, cuts 400 corporate-level jobs – March 29, 2012
