Home industry retail Between Best Buy and Amazon
Retail
CIO Bulletin
2017-07-19
Best Buy has been offering in-home installations and repair service through Geek Squad for nearly 15 years. Now Amazon is coming up with its own in-house gadget expert which is causing serious competition to Best Buy. What Amazon is aiming for is free Alexa consultation and other product installation for customer homes. This comes with a bigger aim of creating smart homes for everyone.
In the era of everything-Amazon, it is getting increasingly difficult for other business to not only compete but also to survive. Once the info of Amazon entering into in-house repair services hit the market, the investors reacted by selling out of Best Buy’s stocks. The stocks of Best Buy stumbled down to nearly 7 percent. This has resulted in a loss of more than $1 billion for this electronics retailer.
Currently, Amazon’s new in-home services are available in seven markets. If Amazon does make its way through electronic servicing, it makes one wonder what other areas Amazon will step in to explore. But there is still a long way to go for both Amazon and Best Buy. Best Buy’s Geek Squad has been offering free smart-home consultations along with installations for a cheap rate. In addition, it also announced recently that it will offering Alexa and Google Home demo in 700 of its stores.
Best Buy put this in a statement saying, “We are excited about the range of initiatives we have previously announced that do just that and feel uniquely positioned to serve consumers by offering products, services and support wherever the customer wants it, including in 1,000 stores, on Bestbuy.com and in homes millions of times a year. Additionally, our 20,000 Geek Squad agents serve tens of millions of customers annually, taking a brand agnostic approach to virtually any technology need people may have, just as we do online in our stores.”
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