Offline shopping? Best Buy wants to send a salesperson to your home

Currently being tested in markets such as Atlanta, Austin, and San Antonio, Best Buy is trying out a free service in which a salesperson is sent to your home in order to provide recommendations about products to purchase. Basically, its a personal shopper for electronics, appliances and everything else Best Buy sells.

The company is trying out this method of sales since customers seem to spend more money while shopping online at home rather than when they go into a Best Buy location. However, it’s unlikely that all online shoppers would want a personal shopper on hand during the process.

According to the store, the employees working in this new on-call service are not being paid any form of commission, but rather flat hourly rates. Of course, it’s likely that the associates would push high-margin services with products, such as replacement / service plans or new Best Buy credit cards. It’s also likely that home installations of said product recommendations will be promoted during the point a sale, which would cost the customer an additional fee.

While Best Buy has certainly lost business to Amazon over the last several years, the company is rebounding a bit with a push into smart home tech, large appliances and mobile devices. Revenues at U.S. stores has risen this year and beat Wall Street’s expectations. Similar to Walmart, Best Buy is in a good position moving into the high volume sales event that’s the Q4 holiday shopping season.

One potentially useful service that could be incorporated into Best Buy’s new program would be testing a home for Wi-Fi dead spots in order to upgrade to a mesh, wireless networking system. With the increasing bandwidth needs for everything from smart locks to several televisions streaming Netflix at the same time, mesh networking is a must for reliable Wi-Fi in large homes.

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2 Comments

1. 

   Doug Dingle

   August 31, 2017 at 4:14 pm

   What a frightening thought this is. No thanks.

   Reply
2. 

   Jack

   August 31, 2017 at 10:13 am

   Yeah, that’s what I want – sales people coming to my home. Because I just don’t get enough sales calls and emails. A salesman in my house would really make me feel good. /s

   Reply