Best Buy China

by Brian Kohlbeck on February 5, 2010

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We’ve talked to many MBA students over the past several weeks as we’ve visited campuses interviewing students for our summer internship program. Best Buy China is one of the most discussed topics. I thought I would share these two videos to give you more information about our Asia business.

I encourage our Finance team members who support our China business to add your thoughts and comments!

Tagged as: China

smakkar

“A new model” was a frequently used phrase to describe our BBY China operations in the videos. Having joined the International Finance team recently, it was quite fascinating to learn about how the Chinese customer has traditionally shopped – which is how Five Star’s model works – and how the BBY China model is completely different.

The traditional Chinese CE retail model entails renting out space to the various vendors. This means that the customer has to go from booth to booth to compare a Panasonic TV to a Sony TV and so forth to find the best option. Additionally, most of the salespeople are employed by the vendors and are commissioned. Since BBY’s model revolves around providing the customer with a solution - we do not sell products and services, we aim to sell a complete solution - we decided to implement a similar model within BBY China. So far, we have heard that the customers are excited about this shopping experience as they are able to compare like products easily and they do not feel pressured to purchase (employees are not commissioned).

What I find exciting is that we are able to connect the learnings from Five Star with the “US way of shopping” and provide a solution that is new and hopefully helps the customer get the best experience – “You, Happier”!