Reporters Notebook

June 18, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Retailers routinely take jabs at their competitors in ads, but the references tend to be oblique.

Not so Best Buy’s latest TV spot in its "True Stories" series of Blue Shirt testimonials, which takes dead aim at Bentonville.

In it, sales associate Rachel Munoz from store  No. 1473 in McAllen, Texas, recounts the time a shopper called from inside a Walmart with questions about flat-panel TVs.

“You’re obviously calling us because we’re knowledgeable,” she tells him...Read More

June 3, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (3)

Wal-Mart has finally achieved its goal of becoming the No. 1 destination for CE.

There is, however, a caveat: According to BIGresearch’s most recent Retail Ratings Report, covering the month of May, the discounter was only tops in electronics among households with incomes less than $50,000. Specifically, 28.7 percent of consumers in this income stratum who were surveyed cited Wally World as the go-to place for CE.

Best Buy came in second place for this segment, with a “consumer preference share” of 26.5 percent, down from 27 percent a year ago.

But the electroni...Read More

May 8, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Long before Circuit City cratered, Best Buy acknowledged Wal-Mart and Amazon.com, rather than the No. 2 CE chain, as the two greatest threats to its business.

Management may have been proven correct. In what could only be described as a nightmare scenario for Best Buy, a Morgan Stanley analyst said that Circuit City’s TV share is being eaten by Wal-Mart and Amazon, with the discounter absorbing the low-end business and the e-tailer taking the premium sales.

In a research note reported by ...Read More

April 30, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (4)

Last month TWICE reported that Sixth Avenue Electronics will be opening its first Pennsylvania showroom in May. Turns out it’s spitting distance from one of Bob Cole’s two World Wide Stereo stores.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cole, a former psychologist and current president of the Home Entertainment Source (HES) buying group, expressed both confidence and concern over his new neighbor.

Sixth Avenue chairman Billy Temiz told the paper tha...Read More

January 29, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (3)

I’m no merchandise manager, but I’ve often wondered why manufacturers with more than one core competency don’t do more to leverage their multi-category strengths with retailers — and why dealers don’t take better advantage of same.

I’m not just talking about bundling Blu-ray players with TVs or cameras with PCs; those are obvious adjuncts. I’m thinking specifically here of CE and appliances. Sure, detergent and flat-panel displays would seem to make strange bedfellows, but countertop LCDs are now fairly common in and around kitchens and laundry rooms.

The official line, ...Read More