Best Buy, Digital Home’s Evangelist

By | October 25th, 2004 comments icon (0) Comments


ExtremeTech reports that in a Q&A session following a keynote address at the DigitalLife show in New York, Brad Anderson, chief executive of Best Buy, said that “tying refrigerators, security systems, and other devices to the home network was the next big thing.” He further stated that “A lot of the hype during the 90′s and the dot-com boom revolved around walking into the kitchen, seeing it react” with personal content tailored to the individual.

Anderson sees Best Buy evangelizing the “Digital Lifestyle” by making technology more fun and useful, but also has been positioning the company to be a partner for consumers in time of need. Enter Geek Squad, Best Buy’s latest acquisition for 24×7 in-home technical support. With Geek Squad, Best Buy hopes to earn additional revenue for helping consumers install and configure their devices, as well as, having technicians making house-calls for simple how-to and troubleshooting questions. In this regard, Geek Squad is an invaluable resource to consumers who have typically felt that once they have purchased a new product (especially an early adopter type product) that they were left to fend for themselves in figuring out how to install, configure, and maintain their new equipment (for most people that’s a very unsatisfying experience).

So it begs the question, are consumers who are interested in digital home products going to always need a technician to help get them up and running? The answer… it depends. If the consumer is technically savvy, no. But if we’re talking about the average Joe, then yes. It wouldn’t be surprising to see companies like Best Buy offering bundled maintenance packages on certain products, similar to the insurance protection plans many electronics retailers offer to buyers today. But now a new question arises… are consumers going to be smart enough to operate their devices once they have been trained? Well, if you’ve had any experience trying to show someone how to do something with a computer once, to later be called over to explain how you did it again, then there’s really not much hope here.





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