November 11, 2008
Best Buy Giving Up Control for Greater Reach
Best Buy is no longer
counting on consumers to come to their own website to see product information
and deals but is also extending a variety of outward communication delivery
systems to go where there customers are, including via email and mobile
devices. The company is using application programming interface (API) technology
that allows others to take Best Buy’s content for free and integrate it into
their own websites, social networking sites, blogs,
mobile applications, and beyond.
As an article on the StorefrontBacktalk site pointed out, this strategy could mean “a blog discussing high-definition televisions could allow people
to purchase such devices from that site.”
Michele Azar, Best Buy’s VP for emerging channels, told StorefrontBacktalk, “Our customers are going to expect us in these new
places.”
Dave Micko, a technical lead in the emerging channels group, said, “Our
vision certainly extends beyond blogs and social
sites. The foundational data can flow into all sorts of places, from mobile
to your TV or your car or even your bathroom scale.”
Jon
Crowe, enterprise technology services director at Cabela’s,
doesn’t buy into the notion that efforts such as Best Buy’s will only appeal
to Gen X and Y consumers. “I think that, in the future, over the course
of the next 24 months, social sites and blogging will
become much more prominent,” he said. “It certainly makes a lot
of sense, and if you can expand your sales channel touchpoints and
do it without watering down the brand, that’s something you want to take
a serious look at.”
The
real issue for Cabela’s comes down to control
of the brand and message, said Mr. Crowe.
“If
you drop your widget on, let’s say Facebook,
and there is a problem, that’s not going to be perceived as Facebook’s problem.
That will be perceived (by customers) as Cabela’s problem,” he
told StorefrontBacktalk.
Best
Buy’s Micko said concerns over control are purely an academic discussion
since content is being taken daily without the company’s permission.
Discussion Questions:
What do you think of the use of application programming
interfaces by Best Buy and others to put their content in more places
where it can be seen by consumers? What are your thoughts on the net
pluses/minuses relative to giving up control of the content once it is
taken from the retailer’s or other marketer’s site?
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Poll
This is a classic example of bringing the business to consumers, not the old way of asking consumers to come to the business. This will be a huge success for them.
Kudos to Best Buy for being on the leading edge of embracing the reality that consumers (people) move laterally through the web–they talk to their friends, they compare prices and they do research and fact finding everywhere. Marketers will have to get comfortable with things leaving their site. The downsides clearly include the challenges of tracking how and where things are used and, as the article mentions, the negative brand impression when other sites fail but the upside of people taking your brand and sharing it in their own voice is well worth the risk.
Forrester’s research shows that “my own experience” and “the experience of friends and family” are the things people trust most when making a purchase decision, By sharing their brand across the web Best Buy allows its customers to influence each other in a brand centric context–and oh by the way, they actually end up with more control about making sure the right information gets out there than if they just let it happen but don’t participate in it.
Off the top I would have to say this is the dumbest idea any retailer could come up with. Why any retailer would allow a group of independent outside companies to manage how they are presented to the consumer is just plain stupidity.
What if one of these site sells discount electronics and puts Best Buy’s interface on their site to prove they have the lowest prices? What if the interface ends up on a Best Buy bashing site?
On a separate note, what’s in it for any site owner to want to integrate a Best Buy interface? Do they get commissions? If that is the case, every college kid will be lining up to have a Best Buy interface on their “co-ed babes” Facebook site.
From a purely technical perspective, I am not sure what the advantage is to having your own API rather than registering for the Google Adsense feature.
From a marketing and cost perspective, there is an advantage of course. By providing an easy API, Best Buy has the potential for exclusive links on user websites that are not shared with the various other Google advertisers. And of course, costs should be less because there is no third party fee to be paid to Google. The Best Buy assumption seems to be that sites will want to put the Best Buy links up for free. This is kind of like asking someone to hang a sign on their building. I am not sure how many site designers will want to display the Best Buy stuff for free when they get paid for Google Adsense.
So while it seems like a clever idea and I understand the marketing advantage, I don’t see the logic behind the technology or the economics associated with publishing your own API.
This is the newest incarnation of the old adage “go where the customers are.” We know that customers are going to research products before making a purchase…it only makes sense to then make it simpler for them to buy.
I’m not big on giving up total control especially when it comes to brand and the internet. Yes, the far reach of the internet is a priceless marketing tool, but do you want your brand associated with some of the less savory sites out there? How about the Best Buy logo right beside some adult site link? The positives are important but the possible negatives are very big negatives in my observations.
This just makes sense. It expands the reach of Best Buy and puts content in the hands of the public. Yes, there are downsides, but copying content is not going to go away. Best Buy has decided that rather than fighting a battle it cannot win, it will use the process to its benefit. Look for more retailers and manufacturers to go this route in the future.
We just completed a bunch of proprietary Shopper’s Journey research that totally validates why Best Buy is doing this for the shopper. I think it’s a good idea, but I do think they will have to watch brand control very carefully and be prepared to pull the reins in as needed. But the bravest brands win and Best Buy is out there keeping connections with potential shoppers wide open.
Lisa is right on here.
Taking the idea of extending BBY’s brand context into a more relevant place (i.e., for the customer) is how a brand becomes more customer relevant as well. After all, isn’t a fundamental part of retail “location, location, location”?
There is less control for brands than ever based on digital media and viral movement and Best Buy will clearly position themselves to win with this approach, and compete with Amazon who is already doing this.
This is exactly what the best retailers must be doing. Have a great store and find ways to reach the customer where they are.
Crowe is exactly right. Sears recently did a promotion on Facebook that went wrong. If you read the large number of posts from consumers…this continues to hurt their brand image: http://www.facebook.com/sears
Read the comments posted on their wall.
Great comments. Even Marc Gordon’s that says this is the dumbest idea any retailer could come up with. I should point out that it’s my idea. 🙂
As several of the commenters point out, part of what we are doing is simply realizing the inevitability of what the Internet is doing to our brand and our content. We can’t keep people from using our stuff in ways we don’t anticipate, but we can try to participate, understand the use and channel it in useful ways.
Some of the comments draw parallels between what we are doing and Google AdSense. That’s not really a good comparison. What AdSense does is let you give up a portion of your site’s real estate to generate revenue. You don’t control that area. What Remix (or another open API, such as Amazon Web Services, Netflix, MTV or others) lets you do is tap into someone else’s data for your own purposes. With Remix, you can build a widget that shows top-selling items, or items matching your preferences (just Xbox 360 games with ratings of 4 or higher from customer reviews, for example), with the selection updating as the source data changes.
One thing I want to make clear: Remix allows you access to the product catalog data, not free use of the brand. While there is little we can to to prevent the Best Buy brand showing up next to “some of the less savory websites out there,” Remix has no effect on that. Almost anyone who knows how to use a Web browser can copy and paste our logo wherever they want. It may be illegal or unethical, but there are no technical barriers. And opening up the product catalog, which we already make available for free as BestBuy.com, doesn’t increase our risk of brand issues.
And yes, there is a financial incentive offered for Remix. Best Buy has an existing affiliate program that pays commissions on sales resulting from referred traffic, and using Remix in conjunction with that program could be a nice opportunity. It’s possible that college kids will put links to Best Buy on their co-ed girl web sites. But they can do that now, and in all honesty they have little incentive to use Remix for that purpose.
As I said, great comments and discussion. I’ll be watching this thread and looking for more comments. We also have a forum for discussion at the Remix portal: http://remix.bestbuy.com/forum
Positioning access to the Best Buy site via links embedded in relevant sources such as blogs, Facebook pages and other forms of social media is not a bad idea. I am unclear about the degree of uptake on this because I honestly don’t see the benefit to the site putting the API in place. Maybe I missed something.
However, I think the real answer for Best Buy or ANY retailer is to become the site of first choice during the consumer research process. The point should not be to make Best Buy content accessible from anywhere…but rather to enhance the Best Buy brand and the web experience so that they become the destination choice for relevant content. I’m not opposed to putting content where the eyeballs are–that’s just good marketing. But if Best Buy can do it, why can’t Target? Who decides which to post and when? Isn’t this exactly what AdSense and other ad networks are offering publishers of any kind?
The specifics aside, there’s nothing wrong with the effort, and potentially beneficial. Still, I think the focus should be on their own site, not on others.
Best Buy has consistently shown their willingness to move, change and try. As noted, this content whether Best Buy’s or others is taken for free every day, so why not try to build it up? Sure, there is always risk when things go wrong, but that is equally true on their website and in over 1000 of their stores. That should not be enough to dissuade anyone as it is not what goes wrong, but how one handles it. Look to the Geek Squad at Best Buy which is not only a profit center, but also a line of defense to consumers with issues and in CE there are a lot of them. No one really knows how far or how long the influence of social sites will go, but ignoring their influence when your best customers are there also seems foolish. Getting real input from the ground up is how the best products and offerings get done, and here is another portal to that input. Good work BBY!
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This is a classic example of bringing the business to consumers, not the old way of asking consumers to come to the business. This will be a huge success for them.
Kudos to Best Buy for being on the leading edge of embracing the reality that consumers (people) move laterally through the web–they talk to their friends, they compare prices and they do research and fact finding everywhere. Marketers will have to get comfortable with things leaving their site. The downsides clearly include the challenges of tracking how and where things are used and, as the article mentions, the negative brand impression when other sites fail but the upside of people taking your brand and sharing it in their own voice is well worth the risk.
Forrester’s research shows that “my own experience” and “the experience of friends and family” are the things people trust most when making a purchase decision, By sharing their brand across the web Best Buy allows its customers to influence each other in a brand centric context–and oh by the way, they actually end up with more control about making sure the right information gets out there than if they just let it happen but don’t participate in it.
Off the top I would have to say this is the dumbest idea any retailer could come up with. Why any retailer would allow a group of independent outside companies to manage how they are presented to the consumer is just plain stupidity.
What if one of these site sells discount electronics and puts Best Buy’s interface on their site to prove they have the lowest prices? What if the interface ends up on a Best Buy bashing site?
On a separate note, what’s in it for any site owner to want to integrate a Best Buy interface? Do they get commissions? If that is the case, every college kid will be lining up to have a Best Buy interface on their “co-ed babes” Facebook site.
From a purely technical perspective, I am not sure what the advantage is to having your own API rather than registering for the Google Adsense feature.
From a marketing and cost perspective, there is an advantage of course. By providing an easy API, Best Buy has the potential for exclusive links on user websites that are not shared with the various other Google advertisers. And of course, costs should be less because there is no third party fee to be paid to Google. The Best Buy assumption seems to be that sites will want to put the Best Buy links up for free. This is kind of like asking someone to hang a sign on their building. I am not sure how many site designers will want to display the Best Buy stuff for free when they get paid for Google Adsense.
So while it seems like a clever idea and I understand the marketing advantage, I don’t see the logic behind the technology or the economics associated with publishing your own API.
This is the newest incarnation of the old adage “go where the customers are.” We know that customers are going to research products before making a purchase…it only makes sense to then make it simpler for them to buy.
I’m not big on giving up total control especially when it comes to brand and the internet. Yes, the far reach of the internet is a priceless marketing tool, but do you want your brand associated with some of the less savory sites out there? How about the Best Buy logo right beside some adult site link? The positives are important but the possible negatives are very big negatives in my observations.
This just makes sense. It expands the reach of Best Buy and puts content in the hands of the public. Yes, there are downsides, but copying content is not going to go away. Best Buy has decided that rather than fighting a battle it cannot win, it will use the process to its benefit. Look for more retailers and manufacturers to go this route in the future.
We just completed a bunch of proprietary Shopper’s Journey research that totally validates why Best Buy is doing this for the shopper. I think it’s a good idea, but I do think they will have to watch brand control very carefully and be prepared to pull the reins in as needed. But the bravest brands win and Best Buy is out there keeping connections with potential shoppers wide open.
Lisa is right on here.
Taking the idea of extending BBY’s brand context into a more relevant place (i.e., for the customer) is how a brand becomes more customer relevant as well. After all, isn’t a fundamental part of retail “location, location, location”?
There is less control for brands than ever based on digital media and viral movement and Best Buy will clearly position themselves to win with this approach, and compete with Amazon who is already doing this.
This is exactly what the best retailers must be doing. Have a great store and find ways to reach the customer where they are.
Crowe is exactly right. Sears recently did a promotion on Facebook that went wrong. If you read the large number of posts from consumers…this continues to hurt their brand image: http://www.facebook.com/sears
Read the comments posted on their wall.
Great comments. Even Marc Gordon’s that says this is the dumbest idea any retailer could come up with. I should point out that it’s my idea. 🙂
As several of the commenters point out, part of what we are doing is simply realizing the inevitability of what the Internet is doing to our brand and our content. We can’t keep people from using our stuff in ways we don’t anticipate, but we can try to participate, understand the use and channel it in useful ways.
Some of the comments draw parallels between what we are doing and Google AdSense. That’s not really a good comparison. What AdSense does is let you give up a portion of your site’s real estate to generate revenue. You don’t control that area. What Remix (or another open API, such as Amazon Web Services, Netflix, MTV or others) lets you do is tap into someone else’s data for your own purposes. With Remix, you can build a widget that shows top-selling items, or items matching your preferences (just Xbox 360 games with ratings of 4 or higher from customer reviews, for example), with the selection updating as the source data changes.
One thing I want to make clear: Remix allows you access to the product catalog data, not free use of the brand. While there is little we can to to prevent the Best Buy brand showing up next to “some of the less savory websites out there,” Remix has no effect on that. Almost anyone who knows how to use a Web browser can copy and paste our logo wherever they want. It may be illegal or unethical, but there are no technical barriers. And opening up the product catalog, which we already make available for free as BestBuy.com, doesn’t increase our risk of brand issues.
And yes, there is a financial incentive offered for Remix. Best Buy has an existing affiliate program that pays commissions on sales resulting from referred traffic, and using Remix in conjunction with that program could be a nice opportunity. It’s possible that college kids will put links to Best Buy on their co-ed girl web sites. But they can do that now, and in all honesty they have little incentive to use Remix for that purpose.
As I said, great comments and discussion. I’ll be watching this thread and looking for more comments. We also have a forum for discussion at the Remix portal: http://remix.bestbuy.com/forum
Positioning access to the Best Buy site via links embedded in relevant sources such as blogs, Facebook pages and other forms of social media is not a bad idea. I am unclear about the degree of uptake on this because I honestly don’t see the benefit to the site putting the API in place. Maybe I missed something.
However, I think the real answer for Best Buy or ANY retailer is to become the site of first choice during the consumer research process. The point should not be to make Best Buy content accessible from anywhere…but rather to enhance the Best Buy brand and the web experience so that they become the destination choice for relevant content. I’m not opposed to putting content where the eyeballs are–that’s just good marketing. But if Best Buy can do it, why can’t Target? Who decides which to post and when? Isn’t this exactly what AdSense and other ad networks are offering publishers of any kind?
The specifics aside, there’s nothing wrong with the effort, and potentially beneficial. Still, I think the focus should be on their own site, not on others.
Best Buy has consistently shown their willingness to move, change and try. As noted, this content whether Best Buy’s or others is taken for free every day, so why not try to build it up? Sure, there is always risk when things go wrong, but that is equally true on their website and in over 1000 of their stores. That should not be enough to dissuade anyone as it is not what goes wrong, but how one handles it. Look to the Geek Squad at Best Buy which is not only a profit center, but also a line of defense to consumers with issues and in CE there are a lot of them. No one really knows how far or how long the influence of social sites will go, but ignoring their influence when your best customers are there also seems foolish. Getting real input from the ground up is how the best products and offerings get done, and here is another portal to that input. Good work BBY!