Years ago, working at a telecom giant, I developed a great deal of respect for Best Buy and their willingness to embrace change. It was reported in Business Week that they'd boldly smashed the work clock and eliminated mandatory meetings in favor for a more progressive working environment. Now keep in mind that I was tethered to my desk at the time with all-day conference calls where nobody seemed to pay attention to anything other than someone on the line calling out their name.
"Could you please repeat the question, please?"
It was bitterly ironic that we weren't allowed to telecommute even though we actively promoted it to our customers.
When Best Buy decided to sell mobile devices, I saw firsthand the quality of service and product knowledge demonstrated by their staff.
Leap ahead several years and I continue to have an admiration for how Best Buy approaches their business. Earlier in the year I learned that they'd enabled customers to text product SKUs to the Best Buy shortcode for on-demand information. Then in October they announced mIQ, a service that brings together the smartphone and Web, providing a means to manage personal data over the cloud.
And now Best Buy just announced a downloadable movie service that promises to change how (and where) we watch content. Best Buy continues to succeed because they don't take a wait-and-see approach to the marketplace. They aren't a retailer of high-tech equipment, they are a high-tech retailer and have a vision for for the future. We've seen retailers come and go, mostly those unwilling to evolve with the business. To the degree that Best Buy is successful in meeting customer expectations with their innovative mobile, Web, SMS, and streaming technologies they will continue to play a dominant role in retail.
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