2012 100 - Networld Media Group

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Recent headlines tell a dismal story: “Best Buy’s Dunn Should Be Next CEO Fired” wrote Douglas A. McIntyre on 24/7WallStreet.com. Then, just a few weeks later, “Why Best Buy is Going out of Business … Gradually” topped a 3,000-word screed by Forbes contributor Larry Downes, that garnered some 15,700 Facebook shares, 17,500 tweets, and a blunt response from Dunn himself titled “My Thoughts on Best Buy’s Recent <strong>Media</strong> Coverage,” albeit without mentioning either McIntyre or Downes by name. Best Buy has posted a string of poor quarterly results since Dunn assumed the CEO mantle in June 2009. Throughout his reign, Downes charges, Dunn has pursued a strategy of protecting market share over profit. In the quarter ending November 30, 2011, store sales increased 1 percent — marking the retailer’s first increase in two years. Margins, however, sank, with net income dropping by 29 percent. For the quarter ending May 28, 2011, the firm posted a sales increase of only 1 percent to $10.9 billion. EPS fell by 3 percent to 35 cents. Online revenue rose only 10 percent in the U.S., not nearly enough to keep up with Amazon, which continues to grow more than 50 percent per quarter. Dunn maintains that his company is well positioned to poach significant online market share from Ama- BRIAN DUNN zon.com with Best Buy Marketplace, a new service meant to challenge the world’s largest e-commerce company. The effort addresses challenges shared by all retailers committed to maintaining large bricks-and-mortar operations while simultaneously trying to flank Amazon online. Although Best Buy Marketplace substantially increases the selection of products and brands available at BestBuy.com, Wall Street appears to be losing patience with Best Buy’s plans to overhaul itself. Despite Dunn’s upbeat assurances to the contrary, Amazon.com has badly damaged Best Buy’s earnings and its future projects. As evidence of investor reaction to the CEO’s tenure, Best Buy’s shares are off 43 percent over the past two years, while Amazon’s are up 39 percent, and the S&P 500 is higher by 12 percent over the same period. The market’s stunned response to Best Buy’s third quarter 2011 results and forecasts resulted in shares plummeting more than 15 percent. A decisive blow to Dunn’s tenure may have come just days before Christmas when the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer announced that it would be unable to fill an undisclosed number of holiday orders placed online. 24
42 TARGET After spending two years preparing to take control of its website from Amazon.com, a prominent link (“learn all about what’s new”) on Target’s home page failed to work when the site went live in August. That was just the beginning. Three weeks later, the release of a collection from Italian fashion house Missoni brought a rush of visitors that crashed the site for most of the day. A month later, the site went down again during peak shopping hours. Later that day, Target announced in a one- 43 LULULEMON Vancouver-based athletic apparel company Lululemon Athletica has caught fire with yoga enthusiasts to a degree that sent its competitors stumbling over themselves in pursuit of customers willing to spend $98 on stretchy yoga pants. Mimicking Lululemon’s winning strategy, Nike’s Salvation chain of athletic-wear stores introduced $64 training capris featuring a yoga-studio format and similar logo. Gap’s Athleta stores began selling $60 women’s yoga tops and offering free yoga classes — another Lululemon innovation. Nordstrom’s Zella line, dedicated to yoga attire, went so far as to hire a Lululemon alum to launch the effort. Since opening its first store in the United States in 2003, Lululemon’s aggressive strategy has paid off with revenues growing from $40.7 million in 2004 to $711.7 million in 2010. sentence statement that Target.com president Steve Eastman had left the company to “pursue other opportunities.” All told, Target.com crashes 44 TABLET COMPUTERS IN-STORE An estimated 25 percent of all tablet computers purchased in 2011 were bought by enterprises, and 25 percent of those enterprises were retailers. Retailers are putting tablets to work as digital catalogs, signage and in-store information kiosks. Tablet computing solutions connect retail sales associates with a wealth of knowledge, including product information, learning tools, real-time product inventory, customer reviews and ratings, updated price and promotional information, as well as the ability to print or email any of these. Unlike other business solutions that require a great deal of infrastructure and integration efforts, tablet computing solutions require minimal impact on existing systems and are often more reliable than other solutions. In-store tablet computing systems provide retailers with consistent sales processes that can be promoted across all stores, increased sales, significantly reduced accounted for more than half of the major outages on the top <strong>100</strong> sites in the U.S. by revenue, according to Web monitor AlertBot. Still, e-commerce analyst Colin Sebastian at Robert W. Baird & Co contends that Target made the right move. “The complexity of building a large-scale e-commerce site is really difficult,” he said. “But, at the end of the day, Target made the right decision. Amazon is a competitor, and you don’t want them controlling your e-commerce business.” learning curves for new hires, more engaging and knowledgeable sales associates, sales associates’ ability to help customers in more store departments and a more pleasant and efficient buying experience for customers. 25
Page 1 and 2: TOP 2012 100
Page 3 and 4: WELCOME to the 2012 edition of the
Page 5 and 6: pia Snowe called the incentive “a
Page 7 and 8: Retail sales are expected to grow a
Page 9 and 10: trend toward shoppers using brickan
Page 11 and 12: Prosper Mobile Insights has found t
Page 13 and 14: 13 RETAIL CRM The future of retail
Page 15 and 16: 19 TRADER JOE’S Privately owned T
Page 17 and 18: 25 TIFFANY 26 STARBUCKS According t
Page 19 and 20: 28 DISNEY 29 DIGITAL SIGNAGE Follow
Page 21 and 22: 33 GROUPON/LIVINGSOCIAL/ETC. The ex
Page 23: 39 POP-UP SHOPS Although pop-ups ha
Page 27 and 28: 48 PUBLIX DICK’S SPORTING GOODS P
Page 29 and 30: 54 BEST BUY EBAY Best Buy is taking
Page 31 and 32: 57 RETAIL CROWDSOURCING Crowdsourci
Page 33 and 34: 63 IN-STORE AUDIO While advertising
Page 35 and 36: 70 T MOBILE 71 TWITTER T-Mobile’s
Page 37 and 38: 74 ETHNIC RETAIL The café inside W
Page 39 and 40: 80 FAMILY DOLLAR While other retail
Page 41 and 42: 86 87 RETAIL AT AIRPORTS With malls
Page 43 and 44: 90 ELECTRONIC SHELF LABELS Given th
Page 45 and 46: 96 AUTOZONE Auto parts chain AutoZo
Page 48: DRIVE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND BUILD

2012 100 - Networld Media Group

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?