Team Contribution Summary

Executive Summary

Team Contribution is pleased to be part of this decisive business opportunity that Best Buy is undertaking. From our detailed analysis Team Contribution was able to determine which marketing strategy Best Buy should pursue to increase its market share and profitability.

Team Contribution recommends that Best Buy focus its marketing efforts on building business solutions that meets the needs and preferences of business organizations of all sizes, with a focus on small to medium businesses.

Currently Best Buy’s consumer focus, although a proven successful business model, is limiting potential growth and sales by disregarding the business to business market. Best Buy’s location resources, product line variety, affordable pricing, superior service and a 16% share of the electronics retail market already can be translated from business-to-consumer to business-to-business rather seamlessly and provide an edge when trying to penetrate new markets. There are opportunities for Best Buy to capitalize on such as outsourcing which can make the addition of business-to-business more appealing in terms of costs. To compete against threats, such as discount competitors, Best Buy must innovate if it is to experience further market growth and profitability.

The alternative that was chosen after countless hours of analysis was the “Business Solutions” alternative. The outline of this program is simple, an introduction of business-to-business focused products, a re-purposing of current products to accommodate the proposed model, and a creation of new service products to meet the needs and preferences of the business-to-business environment. Innovation and capitalization of current strengths and opportunities that Best Buy currently possesses was the main reasoning behind choosing this alternative, as it is very compatible with the current business model. From the evaluative criteria, the proposed business alternative yielded the highest long term profits and increase in business-to-business market share. The most significant issue with this approach is that it lacks uniqueness in terms of design, but Team Contribution believes that what is lacking in unique approach is more than compensated by brand image and loyalty, as well as superiority in products and services.

The benefits of this alternative are simple, long term profitability, growth of business-to-business market share, and greater consumer loyalty over all.

Implementation of the alternative will cover two business quarters, beginning on January 10th, 2004 with market research being conducted. Afterwards an analysis of the economic environment, then a marketing mix developed. Once a satisfactory marketing mix is outlined, then a small scale implementation will occur to ensure viability in the real world. Analysis will then be drawn from the results of this small scale implementation, and the marketing strategy will be adjusted accordingly. In the second quarter a full scale implementation will be coordinated, and at the end of the period a final report will be outlined compare the actual and expected performance of the implemented alternative.