Best Buy considering posting competitor’s prices in store

Things at Best Buy the last few years haven’t been going exactly the way the once leader in consumer electronics had hoped. Somehow through the boom of smartphones and mobile data, Best Buy has become a sort of showroom for the digital shopping experience. Many people go to their local Best Buy to check out a phone, tablet, or otherwise only to jump on their mobile device to start searching for a lower price online.

While there is much debate among analysts of how big a problem “showrooming” actually is, Best Buy feels that it has nothing to hide when it comes to its pricing. Best Buy’s new digital chief, Stephen Gillett, recently said the company is considering mounting displays throughout the store that display real time prices from some of its biggest competitors such as Walmart and Amazon. In addition to price comparison, he said the screens could also display product reviews.

Essentially, if you are in the store looking at that new tablet, as soon as you got that nagging feeling that you’re pretty sure you could find it cheaper online, there would be a display showing competitors prices. While the competitor’s price might actually be cheaper, Best Buy believes that in those cases the gap will be small enough that customers will opt to take home their new gadget right then and there rather than go all the way home and wait for it to be shipped just to save a couple of bucks.

While this may work great for core products, they would probably shoot themselves in the foot if they used this strategy for accessories. We’ll have to wait and see if this comes to fruition and, if so, how it plays out.

source: Star Tribune