“One of Best Buy’s main competitive strategies has been to emphasize services, something it has done better in the past than any national electronics retailer. That translates into selling product warranties, or help with installing a home theater or configuring a computer… The company’s blue-shirted tech support staff, called the Geek Squad, has expanded beyond PC-centric services.
…Not all of the company’s services are direct revenue generators. Mr. Dunn said a chief example of the kind of thing Best Buy wants to be known for is a service it calls Walk Out Working that it began introducing in May 2007. The service, which is free, helps consumers configure new mobile phones so that when they leave the store they are able to use features like music playback and Web surfing.
Walk Out Working was born of a joint venture Best Buy started with Carphone Warehouse, a mobile phone-centric chain with 2,400 stores in Europe.”
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