“Among Apple’s many triumphs in the last decade has been the astonishing success of its retail stores,” Steve Denning blogs for Forbes.
“In 2009, when retail sales declined around 2%, Apple’s retail sales rose roughly 7%,” Denning reports. “In 2010, Apple’s retail sales, excluding online, jumped 70% to $11.7 billion, or about 15% of its revenues of $76.3 billion, compared to the overall retail industry’s sales growth of 4.5%.”
Denning writes, “Most commentators dwell on the obvious but superficial features of Apple’s success including: the good design (airy interiors and attractive lighting, a carefree and casual atmosphere); attractive products (strong demand for the products) and focus (a single brand with far fewer products) scale (only a few hundred stores compared to Best Buy’s more than 4,000) and clever marketing (the Steve Jobs factor).”
“Yet firms that have tried to copy these features like Best Buy [BBY] (which has copied the Geek Squad) and Microsoft [MSFT] (which opened its first branded store in 2009 with some of Apple’s architectural and customer-service ideas), have had less success,” Denning writes. “This can lead analysts to throw up their hands and declare that ‘it’s just magic!,’ i.e. success that is inexplicable by any rational process.”
Denning writes, “In reality, Apple’s success is based on deeper principles…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Carl H.” and “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]