Best Buy has made the decision to match the online prices of Amazon and other online retailers over the important holiday season, reports Ann Zimmerman at the Wall Street Journal.
This confirms what we heard from Best Buy's new e-commerce chief Scott Durchslag earlier this week. He said that the first step of a major online shopping overhaul was "price competitiveness."
It's a move to combat "showrooming" — when customers go into a store to test out products, then go online to make their purchases.
The details of the price-matching program are still being worked out, and it may exclude some products, according to the WSJ.
What Best Buy wants is to turn more of their shoppers into real sales. Best Buy says that about 40 percent of the customers who walk into its stores make a purchase — which means it needs to improve both its prices and service.
"Once they're in the store, they're yours to lose," Durchslag told us. "A lot of people talk and write about the 'showrooming' phenomenon. It's a symptom, not a cause. There are things that you're not doing for the consumer that makes them not want to purchase."
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