Best Buy Maintains Big Lead In CE Shopper Preference

WORTHINGTON, OHIO — Best Buy remained the leading choice for electronics shopping among consumers surveyed for a report by market research firm BIGresearch this month. The retailer was named the first choice by 31 percent of respondents, followed by Wal-Mart (17.6 percent), Circuit City (7.5 percent), Sears (2.6 percent) and Target (2.2 percent). Despite slight variations in the percentage of consumers who chose each store, the order of the top five chosen retailers is consistent with last month's report.

The firm's February report contained a wide variety of electronic-specific data, including the reasons consumers said they choose to shop at a particular store for video games, TVs, stereo systems and other electronics. Price was the leading factor, cited by 70.8 percent of respondents. Selection was cited by 55.6 percent, followed by location (45.9 percent), “quality” (36.5 percent) and service (26.4 percent).

Knowledgeable salespeople were the least important factor, cited by 20.2 percent of respondents.

Among the reasons consumers said they'd be tempted to switch electronics stores, 27 percent cited high prices and 21.4 percent complained of inconvenient locations. Poor customer service (14 percent), poor selection (11.6 percent) and competitor advertising (11.4 percent) were other factors listed.

Last month's report also featured data gathered using Satmetrix's Net Promoter Score, which asked consumers to rank the likelihood that they would recommend the store they currently shop most often for electronics to others. Based on a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), Amazon.com was listed as the retailer consumers were most likely to recommend.

The company, through its Consumer Migration Index (CMI), also tracked chains' new customers against the number of customers it lost in the past year in order to indicate whether a retailer has had new growth. Based on its findings, the research firm said, “Best Buy (with a +6.3 rating) is poised to remain the biggest box on the block, while Circuit City manages a customer deficit with a -3.7 rating.”