Harvard Business Review Working Knowledgereports:
Best Buy is reimagining its big-box retail concept to focus intensively on customer needs, and the company's supply chain is an integral part of the new vision.
The Best Buy transformation shows how supply chain executives from a range of industries can look beyond cost savings to make sure they're not missing opportunities to satisfy customers, can structure the supply chain to allow customer-facing units to "pull" product from consolidation centers, can help to relieve frontline workers of responsibilities that aren't essential to sales, and can make sure that supply chain decisions are fact driven—that they're based on evidence gleaned from customer experiences.
The strategy, dubbed "customer-centricity," entails seeing the customer experience from the consumer's perspective and investing in new store formats that are tailored to the buying intentions of the demographic segments—affluent professionals, active younger males, family men, and busy suburban moms, to name a few. Store format is no trivial matter. Even the details can have a big impact on sales. Small appliances that appeal to suburban moms, for instance, began selling much better at a California store after they were moved from high shelves, where they were among major appliances, to a low rack in a prominent location.
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