East Coast Blogging » Retail http://eastcoastblogging.com A Look At The Local DC Tech Scene and Other Technology and Social Media Musings Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:14:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 The Demise of the Brick and Mortar Electronics Retail Stores http://eastcoastblogging.com/2007/12/23/the-demise-of-the-brick-and-mortar-electronics-retail-stores/ http://eastcoastblogging.com/2007/12/23/the-demise-of-the-brick-and-mortar-electronics-retail-stores/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:45:54 +0000 jimmy http://eastcoastblogging.com/2007/12/23/the-demise-of-the-brick-and-mortar-electronics-retail-stores/ Richmond, VA based Circuit City announced a wider than expected loss yesterday just one day after announcing they were giving away millions in bonuses to keep executives and some management. I think this may be the beginning of the end for many of the traditional retail electronics stores.

Granted BestBuy posted a huge third quarter profit, but that was attributed to an

extra week of holiday shopping and sales of higher-margin items such as video game consoles and GPS devices.

Personally, I will be happy to see them go.  With sites like newegg.com, amazon.com, and even costco.com, I am perfectly content to do my research and make the buy online without stepping foot in those stores.  There was a thread on twiiter going last week about the retail chains and how they thought BestBuy service had gotten better.  It is all relative I guess, but I can relate this small story.  A couple was in BestBuy purchasing a $3k LCD HD television, and the “expert” salesperson was selling them the set of $10 RCA cables to connect their equipment …  Gee that will look great.  Those poor people are going to start watching HD content and say “We spent how much to get this ?”.

I realize that the massed are yet to adopt the online shopping experience, although the number is growing fast.  But I think the system of ratings and reviews that Amazon has set up will only help the shift to online.  When I need a product, I go to Amazon read the reviews and then go to newegg and buy the product after checking out the reviews there.  A day later and it is at my house.  I also think that a bulk store like Costco will fare better as well.  With great prices and generous return policies I have had nothing but good experiences purchasing from Costco and I will most likely buy all my future HD tv’s there.

It is curious to me why Circuit City would be wanting to pay bonuses to management who are tallying record loses, but it does not surprise me.  I do not want the employees to lose jobs, but I think the market space for a Circuit City is shrinking fast and wont be surprised or disappointed if they went away in the very near future.  CompUSA ring a bell ? ….

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