Taylor Swift is to blame for Best Buy not earning enough money

[thewayne]

According to Best Buy's CEO.

Apparently 'kids these days' are valuing experiences over 65" 8k TVs and all its accessories, much to the dismay of an electronics store that hasn't done any significant innovation over the last decade or so.

GET OFF MY LAWN!

Let's see (looking at my equipment): I have a Bluray player that we got probably a decade ago when we stumbled upon a sale of the collected Harry Potter movies for a nice price and only had a DVD player at the time. My TV is a 1080p that's smaller than a 42" (foot hurts, can't be arsed to dig out my measuring tape), I did buy a new receiver last year because my old one blowed up. My speakers are literally 35 years old: B&W DM 220s that sound absolutely amazing! I did recently buy two computer backpacks from them for the missus and me, along with a 14 TB backup drive and three movies. I'm contemplating a 4K Bluray drive, but I'm not going to upgrade the TV until it starts giving me problems or we move out of the country.

Oh, the TV I bought in '18 because I was having sinus surgery and was going to be out of commission for a couple of weeks. The one we had was dying and we were planning on watching all six of the director's editions Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies. It was under $200 from Best Buy and still 1080p! Great picture, lousy sound - but since the sound is routed through the stereo and the B&Ws, it doesn't matter!

Sorry, Best Buy. I'm just not in the mood to shell out a lot of bucks on home electronics since I don't need to. But you can console yourself that I'm also not going to see Taylor in concert or the concert movie, so neither of you is going to get my entertainment dollars.

https://gizmodo.com/best-buy-ceo-blames-taylor-swift-for-sales-slump-1850929463

Comments

[gingeriana]

lol, this is hilarious
somebody did a really bad marketing homework for this CEO

i've surveyed no one, of course, but pretty sure "kids these days" use large screens for PS only and all the rest is mobile-first / mobile-always basis, movies and sound included. and half of those mobiles come directly from Apple stores.
so yeah, sorry, Best Buy, at least my 30-dollar waffler maker is yours! :)

[thewayne]

That sounds about right to me, based on observations at the university library where I work.  I'm planning on buying a $300 ice cream machine for our Christmas, and it will most likely come from Best Buy, but I'm not in the habit of upgrading my consumer electronics annually.  If that's what their CEO thinks I should do, well, he's welcome to give me $10k every year and then I'll do it.  Yeah, lump him in the 'clueless/excuse-making' category.  Everybody's fault but mine.

[disneydream06]

Well, I am not doing anything that involves TS.
I did however spend money on a new tv and blu ray player at said Best Buy.
I felt bad about doing it because they are on my No Shopping list, but they are the exclusive seller of Roku TVs.
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I did not know that, not that it influences me: I'll never buy a smart TV: I have no problem buying smart devices and plugging them in to my TV, but I'm not going to give the TV maker an ounce of information as to what I watch.  LG makes more money on view data than they do on the actual TVs that they sell!  And I imagine it's very similar on other smart TV makers.

[disneydream06]

WOW, that is a scary thought. :o

[mtbc]

I've not much visited them lately but my lingering consistent impression of Best Buy is that all the stuff is rather overpriced and this profit margin supports their typically having more sales staff than customers, staff who are carefully trained to bother customers only when they don't actually need to ask anybody anything. It may vary by region!

Yeah, it was only at R.'s urging that we replaced my fifteen-year-old television. (We also have another television that was free giveaway by somebody local.) My most frequent replacement is probably laptop computers every four to five years.

[fairy69]

nothing to do with Taylor Swift, honestly. Best Buy (like Circuit City, CompUSA and other crap DVD/CD/TV/Electronics boutiques) had been in trouble for a very long time mainly because they were dedicated to only the "what is current and expensive". I must admit that I am surprised Apple as a store has lived this long but maybe because they are pushing their iPhones to the sheep every two seconds that people need to GO to the store to get them. Still, at some point, even they will decline in physicality. It's only a matter of time.

[thewayne]

It's very hard for big box stores to compete with Amazon because Amazon doesn't have the property rental overhead.  And there's so many other factors.  Circuit City did themselves in when they fired all their highest-paid sales people, not giving a seconds thought that they were the ones that knew the most and generated the most sales.  Retail is changing radically, and I don't like the model of buying everything online.  I like to see things and handle things before I buy when I can.

[fairy69]

Amazon is also not as it was. Many companies pulled out of their deal a long time ago and what's left are all the Chinese companies...Etsy is almost there as well!

"Circuit City did themselves in when they fired all their highest-paid sales people, not giving a seconds thought that they were the ones that knew the most and generated the most sales. " You know, Apple doesn't even hire the really well-educated Apple people. I worked there for 2 minutes when they first opened the stores and all one had to do to become a "Genius" is to take a training course in Palo Alto - their headquarters and to ONLY train on the latest models. If you ask the average Apple employee about anything more than 5 years old, you're screwed.

" I like to see things and handle things before I buy when I can." For me, it depends. If it's something I already have and are re-buying, I can do that online. We have to do part of our groceries online, in fact but yes, I agree with you that it is often better to see/feel things in person but unfortunately, it's becoming less and less an option. :(

[silveradept]

I mean, it's not for nothing that I have zero interest in "smart" televisions and am aggravated that if I want to big display for my computer, I'm going to have to pay a premium to get it without ads, tracking, and "apps" that are no help to me. If I want to do that kind of interface, I'm going to use Kodi or maybe-maybe see if there's an Android TV I can buy and then install LineageOS on or something like that. But really, I'd rather just have a dumb screen that's ARC and CEC capable.

And also, as to why people might be chasing experiences rather than objects, well, you have to have a place to put an object in, and well, how many young people do you know that are confident they're going to be joining the ranks of home owners, or even to have enough money to be able to rent a house?

[thewayne]

Excellent points!  Myself, I would really like to have a 24" 4K monitor for my PC setup: it looks like I'm chasing a fantasy though.  Larger than 27" seems to be the smallest made.

[silveradept]

The Big River Online suggests LG might have your back with either the LG 24UD58-B or the LG 24MD4KL-B monitors, and maybe there are other companies that do the same.

[thewayne]

I hadn't heard of Big River Online, thanks!