Best Buy ads: Our folks are better than Wal-Mart's employees

Posted Jun 19th 2009 1:00PM by Brian White
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and Advertising, Employees, Best Buy (BBY)

Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has seen resurgent competition from mass retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT); are the employees of either retailer better? Best Buy seems to think so. Some of the newer advertising indicates that Best Buy employees are better at helping customers than Wal-Mart employees.

Although Wal-Mart has greatly enhanced the consumer electronics sections of its supercenter locations in the last 18 months, do the employees really know the ins and outs of all the new technology? Wal-Mart seems to really want to step up its competitiveness against Best Buy and others, but does it have the backbone to do so outside of just the products?

Hard to tell unless you've wandered into a Wal-Mart location recently and asked some informed, pointed questions to employees about the difference in 60Hz or 120Hz flat-panel televisions or making sure you can take full advantage of Blu-ray disc technology if you choose to buy that new player.

Best Buy certainly has a better selection (and in my experience, better pricing) than Wal-Mart in many popular consumer electronics categories, but that doesn't mean its employees are formally trained on the technology they sell better than anyone else. One thing that Best Buy does better than Wal-Mart: ensuring associates ask customers if they require assistance and not treating potential revenue as a nuisance.

Tags: BBY, Best Buy, consumer electronics, inthenews, Wal-mart, Walmart, WMT

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

6-19-2009 @ 2:59PM

GregL said...

I just quit my job at Walmart less than a week ago, so I have first hand experience here. The employees that are placed in the Electronics department are placed there randomly, unless the employee directly asks to be put there, and there is almost no "training" to speak of. I found that my meager knowledge was often much greater than the sales associates'. I haven't been in a Best Buy for months so I can't speak to that, but I can say that Walmart is like the kid selling instant mix lemonade because he saw his neighbor selling real squeezed lemonade and thinks he can make a greater profit.

6-19-2009 @ 11:03PM

Fran Pipkin said...

Well, Best Buy will soon be better now that Walmart plans to lay off and fire most of their long time employees in favor for the 20 hr a week right out of high school part timers in keeping with their young and healthy new attitude. Wow maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.... mummy and daddy already buy them all of the latest gadgets so who else to tell customers what is best. Hmmmm.