Is Best Buy Planning To Give iPads To All Its Sales Associates?
A Best Buy employee fetches an iPad for a customer — Best Buy has been talking up the notion of a broadband-linked “Connected World” for several years now. Does that vision include giving Apple iPads to every salesperson in its 1,000-plus U.S. stores?
Context & Ripple Effects
The rumor lands on top of a deliberate Apple-retail build-out at Best Buy: after pushing to put Macs in more of its stores back in 2008, the chain moved the iPad onto shelves nationwide in September 2010 (iPad in all U.S. stores), and a March 2010 distribution shift already changed how iPad units flow through the chain (changing the iPad unit calculus). Equipping the sales force itself would extend that relationship from shelf space to the people doing the selling.
The claim remains unconfirmed — Best Buy has not said it will hand iPads to associates — but it fits the company's long-stated broadband 'Connected World' vision, and the timing follows Apple's iPad 2 launch, when hands-on demonstration is the product's main differentiator.
First-order effects
- If implemented across 1,000-plus U.S. stores, thousands of Best Buy associates become daily iPad 2 users, turning every sales conversation into a live demo and deepening the store's reliance on Apple inventory for both merchandise and staff tools.
Second-order effects
- Rival big-box and carrier retailers would face pressure to arm their own floors with tablets rather than terminals, making the salesperson's device a competitive line item — and giving Apple pricing leverage over which platform powers the retail workforce.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward tablet-based point-of-sale and assisted selling replacing fixed registers and paper materials across consumer electronics retail, shifting vendor power toward whoever supplies the floor's operating devices, not just the goods on them.
The trend: Tablets are crossing from products retailers sell to devices retailers run their selling floors on, with each large-chain adoption pressuring the rest of the industry to follow.