Best Buy is the largest consumer electronics retailer in both the U.S. and Canada, as well as the owner of Geek Squad, a computer services company.http://www.bestbuy.com/site/null/null/pcmcat174700050009.c?id=pcmcat174700050009 Best Buy controls 19% of the retail consumer electronics market in the United States and Canada, and also has stores in Puerto Rico, China, Mexico and Turkey.http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=page&id=cat12090
The company was founded in 1966 when Richard R. Schulze and his business partner James Wheeler opened an audio specialty store called Sound of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1983 the Sound of Music's board of directors approved a new name, Best Buy, and the first store was founded in Burnsville, Minnesota.
Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video and Pacific Audio all fall under the Best Buy umbrella in the United States, as does the Future Shop brand in Canada. All told, there are more than 1150 stores carrying the Best Buy name under the umbrella. After buying a 50 percent share in the UK's Carphone Warehouse, they plan on expanding their brand awareness overseas as soon as the retail economy allows it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7389291.stm
In October 2008, Best Buy announced the launch of the Best Buy Mobile store. The stores are located in shopping malls and offer mobile devices for sale. Best Buy Mobile employees teach customers how to make all of their mobile devices, such as cell phones and portable computers, work together.http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20081015005976&newsLang=en
With the recent demise of Circuit City, Best Buy has become the primary outlet for retail electronics stores on the East Coast of the United States.http://www.cmosdigitalcamera.com/best-buy-wins-circuit-city-fails/
Best Buy Legal Cases
A lawsuit by Ct Attorney General Richard Blumenthal against Best Buy alleged that Best Buy's corporate headquarters disseminated the anti-price matching policy to regional managers, store managers, assistant managers, and necessary store personnel. Best Buy taught its employees how to deny price match requests in its training facilities in New York. Best Buy provided financial bonuses based, in part, on denying proper price match requests. Best Buy denied more than 100 proper price match requests per store per week."http://blogs.courant.com/george_gombossy/2009/03/best-buy-is-in-hot.html A spokeswoman for Best Buy, Sue Busch, stated in response to the allegations by Blumenthal that the company placed a notice on its in-store site making clear that prices might not reflect what was available on the company's Internet website. She went on to state that the kiosks were never intended "for price-match purposes," but admitted that "a small percentage of customers did not receive a price match when they should have due to errors in policy execution.http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus23dec23,1,5748783.column?page=1&track=rss In March 2009, a class action lawsuit was filed in a New York district federal court stating Best Buy allegedly had a secret "Anti-Price Matching Policy". Juan Ortiz, supervisor at three Connecticut Best Buy locations, as well as other former Best Buy employees claim they had orders from management to deny legitimate customer price match requests.
Key Dates
- 1966: Audio specialty store "Sound of Music" opened in Saint Paul, Minnesota
- 1983: Sound of Music adopted the Best Buy corporate name
- 1987: Best Buy debuted on NYSE with symbol BBY
- 1989: Company adopted current "yellow tag" logo
- 1997: First electronic retailer to sell DVDs
- 2004: Company incorporated Geek Squad offices in every store
- 2007: First Best Buy in China opened
- 2008: First Best Buy Mobile stores opened
