The news that US retailer Best Buy is to close its 11 UK shops shouldn’t come as a surprise: the ‘Big Box’ retailer burst onto the British scene in the teeth of the credit crunch, opening at a retail park in Essex just as petrol prices meant people were less inclined to drive to out of town shopping centres.
But Best Buy Europe has not been a complete failure – when that first shop opened last year, the company made much of its customer service heritage. Consumers could not only buy stuff, they could “Walk out working”. Implicit in the message was what every British consumer knows: outside specialists and rare bastions, the British retail experience can be even more dire than usual if you’re trying to buy a gadget.
And for all the real campaigning influence of champions such as Mary Portas, outlets such as Currys, Dixons and PC World knew that Best Buy had a point. And walk into most shops that sell mobile phones, the focus is not on sitting down for a long chat about what handset would best suit your needs. Phone up the call centre, the story is even worse.
At Best Buy, however, the ‘Blue Shirts’ were there in sufficient numbers to actually help sort out your question, whether you wanted to buy an electric vehicle or a USB cable. Sadly, though, where the high street desperately needs such quality retailers, the out-of-town shopping centre simply isn’t the right setting.
But the intensive nine-week training course that taught Best Buy employees how to treat customers did indeed have a real effect: in an age where transactions are moving online, for technology in particular, shops need to do everything they can to compete with each other for what cash that is spent in person. After all, e-retail accounts for nearly one in every ten pounds spent and is growing at 18 per cent a year, according to e-retail trade body the IMRG.
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