Group items tagged

best buy wants you to recycle e-waste! i love planet earth and so does best buy :-) daily 7.9

"Best Buy is also expanding its services up in the sky. Today it has launched a new music streaming offering-appropriately enough called Best Buy Music Cloud. On the surface, it sounds strikingly similar to what Apple will be offering users in its iCloud music service, but with a few differences:"

Trading in Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne for tech stars Kevin Systrom who co-founded Instagram and Philippe Kahn who created one of the first camera phones, Best Buy is eschewing celebrity for Silicon Valley.

LightSquared, a company that's building a new nationwide wireless broadband network, says Best Buy will resell access to that network, . The electronics chain will sell the service under its own Best Buy Connect brand.

Best Buy is on a mission to change its image and reclaim sales lost to rivals including Wal-Mart and Amazon. Under CEO Brian Dunn, the consumer-electronics chain is testing less-cluttered layouts similar to those of Apple stores, training employees to demonstrate to customers how gadgets work together and moving away from promotions to everyday low pricing. 

"Mobile shopping app Curbside, which lets users shop from their phones then pick up their purchases at a local retailer without getting out of their cars, has been growing quickly since its debut last year, and is now processing thousands of orders per week. And today, the company is announcing a rollout to several Best Buy locations in San Jose, San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area"

Amazon is taking a direct shot at the U.S. Post Office by launching their in-real-life locker box service as a delivery portal for the crap people buy on Amazon.com. They launched in Seattle in 7-Eleven stores, and have recently been spotted in Rite Aide and Gristedes in New York. This isn't an entirely new idea, as Best Buy and Walmart already allow in-store pick-ups of online purchases, but it finally solves the problem of where we can get out Twilight Saga books delivered without having to explain it to our roommates.

Specifically talks about Target and Best Buy learnings

Best Buy launching a store-brand line of interneted-connected TV

"Thanks to Groupon, merchants may face a similar, but perhaps even more damaging, fate. Prices are likely to erode as consumers come to expect deals. They will wait for sales to buy, and merchants will find themselves competing ever more fiercely. Meanwhile, merchants' brand power will be eroded as consumers look to Groupon (as they do to Orbitz), rather than to the merchants themselves, for the best deals."

Rumors that Facebook is in late-stage talks to buy Waze for as much as $1 billion have many wondering if the social network's next great ambition is to tackle the maps and navigation market. Maybe -- but only because maps would be Facebook's best way to route around Google and make money from mobile search.

Target and Radioshack add to the list of retailers buying back electronics to upgrade, like Best Buy

"Like seemingly every startup currently exploring an ad-supported business model, Waze has gone native for its ad platform. Typically startups wade into advertising by working directly with brands then erecting a self-serve platform down the road. Waze sped things up. The company began testing ads in its U.S. app over the summer, working directly with Zipcar, Best Buy and a number of fuel brands and convenience store chains; at launch it has added Procter & Gamble, Dunkin' Donuts, Wyndham Hotels, Whole Foods, Jamba Juice, CircleK and Kum & Go to its advertiser roster. The direct sales channel continues, but Waze has also set up a self-serve platform for its most basic ad units. The self-serve platform operates on an auction model with floor prices set at $1 per thousand impressions. In addition to a branded search result, marketers can pay to plot branded pins at their locations on the Waze map. When users click on these branded pins, they can click a link to the company's website, a number to call the location or-borrowing the idea of drive-to advertising popularized by driving navigation company Telenav-a button that would navigate them to the location."

"Several companies have successfully built cooperative marketing structures online. Companies such as OwnerIQ, for example, enable online retailers like Crutchfield to retarget people who visit the web sites of electronics manufacturers, offering the flatscreen TVs they were just studying - at a discount. When it comes to driving brick-and-mortar sales from online, though, Facebook appears to offer the best solution yet. CPG brands gladly pay for retail circulars to help sell their products, and there's reason to believe they could buy Facebook advertising to drive consumers into retail locations. One company with which we work, ShopLocal, puts a retailer's circular content into a database, including images and all the sale prices and details. In so doing it makes local data portable and extendable, so retailers can build online-only pages of the circular, or utilize QR codes to generate more content than exists in the print world."

"Target's private marketplace operates similarly to others that retailers like Best Buy and Amazon have developed recently. For example, a user may visit Target.com and check out its high-def TVs. As that user navigates to other parts of Target's site, a brand like Sony or Samsung could run ads aimed at that user promoting their TVs-provided they are sold by Target. But the ads don't have to pertain so closely to a specific product category. Adweek encountered a Subaru ad running on Target's DVD and Blu-ray players page; a peek at the page's site code revealed that the ad was sourced through PubMatic."

"Matching Amazon's prices during the holidays is one thing, but Target today announced it plans to continue the practice on a year-round basis. The extended policy will also apply to competitors other than the internet retailer, of course, but Amazon has become the main threat when it comes to "showrooming," a process where consumers visit physical stores to get a quick peek at products before ultimately placing an order online. Target also plans to match rates from Walmart, Best Buy, and Toys R Us if customers should find the same item priced lower there."

Demo games on the web