Attention Profiled Shoppers: Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy’s use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including “Maria Middle America” and “Empty Nesters” Helen and Charlie.
Why do customers need to be stereotyped, you ask? Because some customers are good, and others are bad, and Best Buy employees need to know which ones are which.
Back in 2004, the Wall Street Journal announced that Best Buy had a new customer service strategy. The meat and potatoes of the new strategy was this: Best Buy would concentrate on outwitting pesky bargain-hunters (now known as “demons”)and cater only to its most profitable customers, or “angels.” This new philosophy was based on the work of Larry Selden, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, and consultant to Best Buy.
Larry is all about the customer. He hates products, “…the obsessive focus on products needs to be replaced by an even more obsessive focus on the customer,” he says.
One might assume that with this customer-obsessed guy directing Best Buy’s strategy, there’d be an emphasis on customer service. Not so.
In fact, the first thing Best Buy did after adopting Selden’s method was amend their return policy to include a 15% restocking fee. Too many “demon” customers were returning things.
The most important part this new world order is the “persona.” Personas are essentially stereotypes that Best Buy’s salespeople study in order to sell their most profitable services to different “types” of customers. Young urban males are called “Buzz.” Upper middle class women are known as “Jill.”
Each persona comes with a customized sales approach. Jill wants Best Buy to “help me find and fuel my new passions so I can remain true to myself,” whereas upscale suburban Barry wants “premium brands presented as a total solution.”
And what happens to those bargain-hunting demons? Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson told the Wall Street Journal in 2004 “that Best Buy will first try to turn its bad customers into profitable ones by inducing them to buy warranties or more profitable services.”
“In most cases, customers wouldn’t recognize the options we’ve tried so far,” he said. Maybe this new document (which adds several new categories to the known Best Buy persona universe) can help.
NEW PERSONAS:
Meet Carrie (Young Urban Female), Maria (Middle American Female), and (Empty Nesters) Helen and Charlie!
Click on the pictures below to bring up the slides. navigate using arrows that appear (when moused over) at the left, top and right of the slide, or using the “previous” “next” and “gallery” links at the bottom.
PREVIOUSLY: Best Buy Profiles Customers
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I’m pretty sure most stores do this. I used to work at a outdoor/camping store this is a very large Co-Op. They do this too. Almost every retail job I have had has taught how to sell to different types of people based on stereotypes. Plus, this Co-Op taught me which ones to avoid. This is nothing unique to BB.
This kind of reminds me of a series of classic Bloom County comic strips
[snipurl.com]
where instead of “eating less and exercising” Opus wants to try a million crazy radical plans to lose weight.
Ergo, companies like BestBuy, that instead of simply “providing better customer service and a positive workplace for employees” pay a series of consultants for more and more complex and wacky ideas to make money.
Meanwhile, Apple is raking in cash by the wheel barrow by “providing better customer service and a positive workplace for employees” at their stores.
That crazy Steve Jobs.
Everybody that went to business school knows this crap. It’s not new, unique, or even that interesting. These are the main demographics of their customers.
I hate Best Buy as much as anybody, but, really, is this news?
“snwbrder0721″ I agree with everything you said and thanks for being one of the few people who posted who is not an idiot. Now I use to work at best buy, and all that stuff did was make us better as employees to better deal with the different types of customers that we encounter everyday. Now did it play a huge part in how my personal interaction with customers were, no. But it did serve it’s purpose. And to the people who are saying bad things about best buy. Well just think you go into any other electronic store and a large amount of employees know nothing about the product they’re trying to sell. Where as with Best buy if you don’t have an extremely high product knowledge of the department you’re working in and a good amount of knowledge about other departments in the store, you don’t have a job. So think of that the next time you go into a place and ask a question and the rep is looking to the shy begging for the answer. It’s called Best Buy for a reason, because we make sure that every time you come into our store any of our reps can give you all of the information needed to either make the best buy that day, or if you don’t believe us go home do some more homework and then come back another day to make that buy then. Because in the end it doesn’t matter what demographics you’re in to us we will and I have myself many times talked to a customer for 15mins just for them to say thanks and then leave. Because every Best Buy employee knows that if they did their job, then those customers will be back, because well it is Best Buy.
Damn Buzz for not being loyal to the Big Blue Box and its secret pricing and profiling. Corporations know best.
@girly: ”Will you steal from us?” repeating over and over again in different paraphrases.
mentioned above:
“I like how all of their profiles pretty much say that the person is cheap. “does not want to pay full price”"
pretty much because every person is cheap as hell.
no matter what type i am or who they my stereotype my looks as …. i RARELY if EVER talk to sales staff beyond “Excuse me, i want THIS please”. so whatever.
“sales people”… do not offer me services or try sell me anything. i will figure out what i want myself if i haven’t already, and then tell you to get it for me (if i can’t pick up the box and walk to the counter myself) otherwise, don’t pursue me ….unless you’re cute, then i might say hello and ask for your phone number… ha.
Well DUH! Best Buy is a business. The whole idea of a such a business is to make a profit. Its hard to do so when you have some schmuck who returns a working product only to buy it at a 10% discount next week as an open box. I, personally dislike most big box stores mainly due to the ignorant and catty “sales reps”, but the fact remains, businesses sometimes have to do what is necessary to stay in business.
@Its The Beer Talking: My actual objection to it is companies that turn exclusively to metrics and totally neglect ACTUAL CUSTOMER SERVICE. Some of these companies, and I think Best Buy is guilty to some extend, spend TONS of time and money and effort on researching the CRAP out of everything under the sun, but don’t invest any energy in staff training, real customer service, etc. Things are are “soft” and hard to measure, things that might require managerial discretion, things that require treating individuals as individuals, not numbers.
Yes, a GOOD salesman will start from a profile as a base and then approach the individual customer. But I don’t think Best Buy puts that kind of effort into its sales staff. It’s perfectly possible to watch a company six sigma and metric itself right out of business, with absolutely no idea why their constantly-improving numbers aren’t making profits improve.
A stores primary customer group is identified and the whole store strategy is focused on the one type. I worked in a store that became a “jill” store… They then immediately stocked pink sony digital cameras and disney crap.
@Rusted: Larry probably believes the marketing gibberish I have heard so many other sales managers say in retail stores say:
“Why no they buy a user experience… not just the product”
Even sales associates want to gauge out our eyeballs listening to garbage like this. We know that in a lot of cases these strategies don’t work. You always ask for the obvious add-ons(memory cards for a camera for example), but some things that some of these guys try putting together seem so discordent, I fail to see what user experience they are trying to sell other then going to a used car lot! I remember working at Fry’s and we used to sarcastically say that a lot of customers were like the kids on South Park: “I just want my Ocama Game Sphere.” There are some people that want one product and they will never fit into any of these idealized stereotypical customer molds where you can sell them the following stereotypical addons. The smart salespeople stopped at one maybe two nos on the upsell or the extended warranty unless they really felt like the customer was going to get it at some point earlier in the conversation.
Even Fry’s dumbest managers for gods sake discouraged us to stereotype customers. I know one of the corporate guys (John Gamet) always gave Steve Wozniack as an example of how millionaires will walk into your store dressed in jeans and look just like any other joe on the street with the key difference that he can afford to buy anything item you sell in the store and more. Not ignoring this person because they look like they don’t have money is stupid.
The same thing can be said about race. The best salespeople only see one color: green.
Some things like trying to create strategies to get rid of money losing customers while still retaining most of your profitable one’s may be worth paying this guy something if it isn’t incredibly obvious (a 15% restocking fee fits under the obvious category). I gotta give this Larry guy kudos for bilking BB out of whatever six or seven figure consulting fee he charged for this goofy advice that anybody with a little knowledge of consumer electronics could have came up with!
As long as BB keeps following the advice of idiots like this they may soon eventually go down the toilet along with CircuitCity into the retail graveyard in the sky.
It is amazing that these stereotypes exist for Best Buy to manipulate. I feel as though in days long past, they might have had less success with an approach like this.
It seems the youth and now young adults are an installed and functioning platform for profits.
…That is of course if you’ve done the right legwork to interface to them with techniques like this.
@fuzzymuffins:
“no matter what type i am or who they my stereotype my looks as …. i RARELY if EVER talk to sales staff beyond “Excuse me, i want THIS please”. so whatever.”
Most geeks are like this because they do know what they want as opposed to a lot of idiots who vacillate endlessly because they don’t know what they are doing and didn’t even try to learn about the products.
“”sales people”… do not offer me services or try sell me anything.”
Fry’s corporate had a name for these type of wallflowers:
Clerks.
Most stores, save for Fry’s, Microcenter, and a few high end niche shops are all straight hourly without commission so what impetus for going out of their way to close a sale? They will get the same pay regardless. Except for Circuity City maybe getting a new management team that sees merit pay as part of turnaround project to stave off their impending insolvency I don’t expect to see commission salespeople in retail electronics making a comeback at any stores that have eliminated it. BB hasn’t taken a Bear Sterns yet, so getting them to do something as fundamental as changing their pay structure isn’t going to happen. CC on the other hand, might want to look back at some form of commission system.
“i will figure out what i want myself if i haven’t already, and then tell you to get it for me (if i can’t pick up the box and walk to the counter myself) otherwise, don’t pursue me”
You know I am like that too, generally, but this is more because the salespeople generally don’t know jack, so talking to them is often a waste of time. If I find a good one who has actually used xyz new product I want to talk to them, you’re right otherwise go away.
“….unless you’re cute, then i might say hello and ask for your phone number… ha.”
Well, I am such a shy guy when it comes to cute women, but if there were such an animal at most retail stores I might strike up some idle conversation if possible.
I’d say I definitely fall into their demon customer category. The only reason I go to Best Buy or Future Shop is when I have a good pricematch to screw them over with.
I worked at best buy for about two years in high school just as they were beginning to roll out this ‘customer centricity’ program. It’s really not at all as vicious as this article makes it sound. Seriously. I’m currently a business student in college, and I’ve spent a lot of time studying how businesses are consistently trying to better meet the needs of people who make up their main customer bases. And that is what the ‘customer centricity’ model is all about- not stereotyping, but meeting individuals’ needs.
Each store ‘knows’ what kind of people primarily shop there based on the demographic data of the surrounding geographic area. The store I worked in was mostly patronized by the ‘Jill’-type customers with a secondary disposition towards ‘Barry’. ‘Jill’ type customers, as mostly suburban moms, are more likely to be somewhat overwhelmed by the Best Buy store environment, so we deliberately kept our in-store music at a lower volume and put a higher level of emphasis on store cleanliness and cultivating a friendly environment. I had several of these types of customers actually say to me things like ‘I’m not sure what you guys have done, but I like this Best Buy a lot more now!” Does making peoples’ lives better sound like dehumanizing stereotyping to you?
I work for Best Buy. Not just any Best Buy. Our store has consistently ranked very, VERY high since we opened. We were #1 in the company a few months back, as well. So there can be a LOT of pressure from management here, as you could imagine.
The first thing I will say about Best Buy is that for a company that prides itself on not being commission-based, they sure do act like it. Customers are so surprised when they find out we aren’t; the company says customers are happy when they hear that, but from what I’ve experienced, they’re often surprised instead of happy, because of how high-pressured of a sales environment it can be to them. Customer Assistants (think of them as universal sales associates; they can sell anywhere in the store) have, would you believe, sales trackers, despite getting absolutely NOTHING extra for keeping track. It’s a joke. It honestly makes no sense, since a manager can just go into the server and pull up any sale, by any employee, from any date, at any time if they so desire. No need for a paper copy that justifies absolutely nothing.
Sales Associates don’t always need trackers, but are expected to meet a LOT of expectations for getting only slightly above the minimum wage (just like Customer Assistants). I probably can’t say it’s illegal, but it truly is unethical how poorly Best Buy treats their employees. For all of their crazy sales expectations, for their poor staffing that often leaves only one person in a department by themselves for hours (and expected to be on top of everything at the same time), for all the monthly meetings (the one for the holiday season being the only meeting worth showing up to) on a Saturday or Sunday morning that we are forced to go to — honestly, just for the drive and overall committment they expect from their employees… it’s wrong.
This company contradicts themselves all the time. They’re TOO adventurous. They are always trying new things or shifting their main focus entirely way too often. This disrupts any sense of consistency and it’s just a pain in the ass for any sales associate or customer assistant. On top of this, management often expects us to simultaneously stay on top of a lot of things pertaining to the merchandising end of things, because most BB’s have understaffed merch teams (like every other department, but that’s another post for another time).
I’d argue that Best Buy is so high-pressured that they might as well BE commission-based. I can’t help but laugh at them for making fun of other companies who are using the commission model. BB isn’t much different. Every morning we have meetings before the store opens, where we are beat over the head about how important it is to attach accessories, sell services, etc. Believe me, Best Buy isn’t just doing this because they want to be there for the customer, they’re doing it because they want their MONEY. The fact that they get so pushy about making margin while at the same time priding themselves on not being commission-based really does show you how unorganized and just plain backwards this company is. If you could see first-hand how dedicated they are to basically forcing the employee to turn into a sales robot, you’d understand if you haven’t by now. At least those other companies we laugh at pay their employees more for being forced to act like a bunch of tools!
I can tell you that many managers follow this lifestyle grouping (it’s basically glorified shopper profiling, and it disgusts me), as if it were their religion. Supervisors follow it either because they know they have to, or in some cases, they’re about as brainwashed as their superiors. Most other people on the sales floor are either indifferent about the whole thing, or hate it with a passion like me. I don’t follow the whole lifestyle grouping idea. At all. I carry on a conversation with someone and suggest things based on what they tell me they need. And that is, of course, if the customer is engaged enough in the conversation. I stop there. If they aren’t in much of a talking mood and have their mind set (nothing wrong with that, even though Best Buy frowns upon it), I give a simple pitch to try and tie in services (since, sadly, at my store at least, they watch services like hawks, and will eventually come after you if they feel you aren’t offering.) I don’t try to throw customers into some group that predefines them based on a few key phrases. It’s totally unrealistic and the most successful sales do not depend on such a pretentious selling model. I speak from experience, thank you.
Best Buy actually has “360″ forms (for employees) where you are to basically recap a sale that you had and turn it into a supervisor or manager. You identify the lifestyle group and talk about what you suggested, what extra stuff you tied in, etc. It’s a reflection of how stupid lifestyle questions/grouping is, though, because NO ONE does these forms unless they are forced to.
It’s honestly impossible to put most people into these groups — and even if you DID, it’s still impossible to expect them to act like the leaked presentation says they should. By the way, the document leaked is just a jazzed up overview of what they’ve been doing for a long time now. But I’m glad it’s out there, since customers can now easily see how ridiculous of a company Best Buy is. Why do I work there? Good question… great discount, I’ve made some friends, but ultimately I am going to be leaving VERY soon as I’ve been there for a year too long.
Also, Best Buy is desperate for margin. It’s kind of ridiculous. The whole lifestyle grouping is, as previously mentioned, ultimately about how Best Buy can exploit the customer and make more money off of them. Truly though, I would not be surprised if in the next couple years we read reports of the company losing a LOT of money and really going down the spiral. What a great day that will be.
Best Buy essentially dug their own grave. In the 90′s they dropped their prices to drive away competition and shut down mom and pop stores. They’ve succeeded in doing that and have now flooded the electronics market with their big blue stores. They really have no regional competitors besides Circuit City, which isn’t saying much (no offense to CC employees, I shop at your store all the time). Who else is there in every single state? No one. That’s also why I believe BB can get away with doing so much crazy stuff… they’re the only show in town, and they KNOW it. It’s going to catch up to them sooner or later.
@alphafemale: I work at BB and no question, some stores do some crappy things, but questioning the charitable contributions that the company has made and that I, as an employee, have made, is crappier. I can volunteer for *ANY* 501 3 c charity and for every 40 hours I put in, I get to give that charity $1000. Wow, I’m a horrible person. Last year, I managed to get Susan G. Komen $800, a city scholarship fund $1000, a charity that helps disadvantaged youth join sports teams $1000, and an after-school program for disadvantaged youth $1000. I’m so ashamed.
These profiles are salesmanship 101. Most natural salespeople have these “stereotypes” down pat. You tailor your approach depending on the customer’s personality. What, exactly, is shocking here? If I walk into Neiman Marcus wearing stained sweats, I will probably be followed by security. If I walk in carrying a Chloe bag and a little rat-dog, they’ll get me a San Pellegrino.
Also… someone commented about how gays don’t exist in the BB world. As a matter of fact, BB was voted #1 gay-friendliest retailer in 2007 and I’m proud of that. If our benefits manual ever gets leaked, the benefits given to same-sex partners are pretty awesome. Not only that, but before getting in big trouble with the IRS, BB’s benefits to same-sex partners were the SAME as given to hetero partnerships. But, since the US federal government doesn’t consider a same-sex partner a spouse under the law, any medical benefits are considered income to the other person. Now, however, you can insure your same-sex partner but with your after-tax income instead of pre-tax. Still…
I’m a therapist. This is such crap.
strange how everyone thinks this kind of strategy is to “stereotype” consumers. as a former BB employee, I can tell you it is the exact opposite. the point of catorgizing shoppers is to lay the groundwork for what kinds of products a person will want (like someone earlier said different stores have different products depending on what customer segment is most abundant in the area…e.g. Magnolia is in stores with a lot of Barry customers)… it is for sales reps to know and understand their customers. nothing is based on physical appearance and one can only be labeled after a salesperson has spoken with and understood what a shopper is looking for. the truth is that it works. it gives the sales rep a chance to ask questions and recommend the right product for a shopper. and just because there are categories doesn’t mean everyone will fall into a category.
Holy Smokes, this is ridiculous. How about simply talking to folks to identify their needs and selling products that fulfill that specific customer’s wants/needs. You do it right and those evil demonic customers don’t return the junk you forced upon them. Returns are a byproduct of a failed sale- not bad customers.
Sorry, Who gives a Shite. I worked at Best Buy I went to college too where they taught the same thing in my Business classes. For those of you who think it’s not so true its because you are in one area with out links to the other areas of Segments. This is how it is, your parents, you, your kids, your wife, this is life and we wont move from it. Not that I like best buy, they can suck mine if you know what i mean.
@wellfleet: Sorry, didn’t mean to criticize you, or any employees who give time or money to charities… But it can’t be crappy to simply question a companies charitable giving, we have to question things, it’s human nature… What bothers me about it is that corporations take the credit for it all, and they give up nothing, any $$ donated is tax-deductable. I don’t know the particulars of BB’s proceedures, and I was basing some of my rant on my own experience at another company where we were handed a printout of acceptable charities to volunteer with, and we were hassled mercilessly to give to United Way so the company could get the publicity for giving.
also:
[www.alternet.org]
[thinkbeforeyoupink.org]
It’s is stuff like this that makes me happy i am no longer working there, I just couldn’t profile people like this ever.
@alphafemale: The value of volunteering drops by 10% if the volunteer is wearing a Best Buy shirt. So yes, every company should tell the community to go fuck itself: “Take off that Best Buy shirt, volunteer! Watch TV on your time off for all we care.”
The Corporate Social Responsibility movement must end. No revenue, through any way, shape or form, should be funneled into “community” interests. The only thing that a corporation should care about is profits, its bottom line, and returning value to its shareholders. Economically speaking, volunteering is detrimental to the company. Clearly, companies today are only doing it for the tax break, which makes them evil. If we eliminate the tax incentive, we can eliminate CSR.
But even then we all know that bleeding-heart liberals, having failed to change corporations through legislation, have begun to attempt to change corporations directly, one-by-one. One of those ways is shaming them here on the Consumerist.
You see, Consumerist! You’re just playing into the liberal agenda to destroy our economy.
This is nothing to be upset about, really. This sort of thing is literally used everywhere, not just in sales.
In fact, I would wager that the the majority of the people complaining have a boss that not only knows their MBTI personality type, but leverages that knowledge to get the most out of them.
I know it’s much more fun to ignore all that in favor of complaining about Best Buy, but (this time) they’re not doing anything wrong.
Heads up from someone that has worked for Best Buy for 2 years, and has worked with co-workers that have been with the company for over 5-10.
We don’t think about our service operating procedure every day and resort back to these stereotypes in order to answer the questions of our customers and help them find the products they want.
This training is semi-annual, and is usually only to promote customer awareness in our employees, not so much as to turn all of our associates into mindless car salesmen. Asking what kind of uses for technology a customer has, their name, finding a package deal that suits their needs and budget… that’s a lot more important to us.
To be frank, we somewhat scoff at these training materials due to their limitedness and profiling. Most of us realize that there is much, much more to a good customer experience than giving names to stereotypes and guessing what type of person one of our guests are.
And I’m kind of ashamed that you all think we should ‘just die already’ are really being insensitive to the fact that we are real people that actually try to make a rewarding customer experience and help our guests with their questions and needs.
If you’re in a Best Buy store, and you’re not being greeted, asked if you can be helped, or overhear employee’s ever, ever reference a customer by any of these stereotypes; something is wrong there. And As an employee who respects his ability to make an impact on others by amazing them with good service, I appologize if your Best Buy service is anything less.
I think this is funny how people are reacting to this as if it’s a bad thing. Best Buy is not stereotyping people to segment “good” customer’s against “bad” customers. This is put in place for a few reasons. First and foremost BB wants to know their customer’s better to cater things to them. This is also an excellent training guideline for some high school kid with low social ability and no sales experience. Basically it says you don’t want to speak to a “buzz” customer the same way you talk to a “Helen” customer, typically. This absolutely correct. The AVERAGE retired couple wants a quality product that is easy to use. They don’t care about technobabble as long as it’s a reliable product and meets their needs. The “buzz” on the other hand is typically a younger male who really like technology. He knows what he wants, and can usually understand more of the younger fast paced talk. That’s not to say that a “Helen” can’t be a “Buzz.” It absolutely happens and they make that clear. Maybe “Helen” is a retired engineer from Boeing. These are things you should learn in the first few minutes in speaking with your customer. If that is something you pick up on, you can go into all the technobabble you want. As someone formally on commission, my paycheck relied on my ability to cater my sale to different types of customers. I didn’t talk to every customer in the same manner.
As far as not getting helped because you aren’t standing next to an expensive product, that has nothing to do with these customer profiles, and everything to do with a lazy salesperson. I rarely stop to talk, I make constant rounds and always check with EVERY customer MULTIPLE times.
Nice review with good data. I’ll add a link to it from my “Angel and Demons” article from my own page. Let’s spread the word.
I worked at Best Buy between early 2005 and late 2006, it was about early 206 that they rolled out “customer centricity” Which is the concept that “you base your product sales around the customer, not around the product” meaning you ask questions like “what will you be using this for?” and then show them product based on the responses. The 9 out of 10 people I helped knew they wanted a computer, didnt know what they wanted, the 1 out of 10 that did were my favorites because I didnt have to break everything down to them. The customer centric mindset does help younger inexperianced sales people to pinpoint who they are dealing with.
About mid 2006 they also redesigned stores to focus on one sales group based on what type of sales they had mostly. I live in Sacramento CA, I worked at the Arden Mall Best Buy, we were Buzz/Best Buy For Business, the store in Natomas was Barry, the store in Elk Grove was Carry. This concept has been going on for a while in Best Buy. The “New” demographics they have here have been listed in Best Buy since I left late 2006.
If you really want to mess with the people that work there though get the TV-Be-Gone, the night crew in Home Theater are normally understaffed and you can really have some fun watching them run around trying to fix all these TV’s shutting off.
@amoeba:
For a while I was Jose, still no English though
I went with a buddy last year to look for a cheap new car. when we were test driving the Honda Fit the sales guy didn’t have a brochure so he swiped a coworkers training manual on it and gave it to us. I can honestly say it was one of the funniest documents that I have read in awhile.
that being said, I see nothing wrong with demographics and sales training. I think for the most part it is hilarious to the people being trained as well.
“In fact, the first thing Best Buy did after adopting Selden’s method was amend their return policy to include a 15% restocking fee. Too many “demon” customers were returning things.”
As a former Best Buy Tech (that’s what we were before Geek Squad was purchased) I have to argue this point. The 15% restocking fee was actually around well before the customer typing that is the focus of this article.
It was specific to GPS, Radar Detectors, Notebooks, Desktop PC’s , Digital cameras, Digital Camcorders, Portable DVD players, and projectors. This isn’t something new, this is stuff going at least as far back as ’03, and even farther back as this was a well established practice when I started with them.
@xmarkd400x: You are not wrong but 100% correct – virtually all retailers and most other customer-facing companies utilize personas (not “profiles”) as a tool to for marketing, training and other purposes. This is pretty unremarkable IMHO.
This isn’t ususual at all. Most companies do this in some fashion. It’s also not meant to be as literal as people here make it out to be. The idea behind “marketing personas” is to give employees an uderstanding of the variety of people that they can encounter. It also helps marketers develop messages and offers that resonate better with their customers and prospects, also preventing offers that the customer isn’t interested in. You can’t visually identify these individuals when they walk into the store, and that’s not the point of this. Companies primarily use purchase data and other transactional information. The term “profiling” has a negative stigma associated with it. But other terms are “persona marketing”"file segmentation”"loyalty marketing” and other more neutral terms.
I look like an angel (Carrie)…
but I’m the devil in disguise!
(must remember to tart up a bit before going to BB)
wake up people. every major company does this. you can think of it as “evil” or you can think of it as helpful. it allows companies to target marketing and make messages more helpful, meaningful, entertaining, RELEVANT, etc.
if you don’t like it, don’t shop there. and walmart, target, circuit city, mcdonalds, etc, etc.
it is fine to be an informed consumer, but if you think every one isn’t doing this you’re blind. all the complaining won’t stop anything if you continue with mass consumption.
I agree with the fictionalized ‘Maria’ on this point…Best Buy is ‘a store I go to only when….forced to go. Takes way too long to accomplish my mission…’
Well put, XianZhu. My former roommate worked for Best Buy and it helped me put a lot of this into perspective. These profiles are not meant to stereotype customers, rather they are designed to help Best Buy’s employees understand broad groups of customers and relate better to their differing needs/lifestyles/shopping habits. At the end of the day, you should have a better shopping experience as a result because the employee you are talking to is better able to “speak your language”.
Of course, like all corporate policies and guidelines these profiles have the potential to be abused and work best in the hands of a capable, intelligent salesperson. Unfortunately, Best Buy does not have a great track record when it comes to hiring these types of individuals. They tend to move on to better, higher paying jobs.
Wow, just imagine if they put all the time and effort they put into stereotyping their consumer base into teaching their employees about the technology they sell.
That might actually be a sound business model or something.
To really play around with their “system” use totally
different clothes. I work as a painter and I love to go the electronic stores and wear my painting shirt and shorts. I have all the time in the world to do my shopping without someone asking if I need help. And what’s with the greeters? The only other store I can think of that does that is Walmart. Circuit City sure doesn’t do that and they also don’t tell you three times in conversation how they are not on commission.
Do people still shop at electronic stores?? Everything is online for half the price and no tax. You’d have to be an idiot to pay full price and tax at a big-box store.
the article says:
Best Buy would concentrate on outwitting pesky bargain-hunters (now known as “demons”)and cater only to its most profitable customers, or “angels.”
The Tipping Point
Copyright © 2000 by Malcolm Gladwell
60-61
What’s to stop them from cheating us with meaningless “everyday low price” signs every time we walk in? The answer is that although most of us don’t look at prices, every retailer knows that a very small number of people do, and if they find something amiss – a promotion that’s not really a promotion – they’ll do something about it.
One name for them is “price vigilantes.” The other, more common, name for them is “Market Mavens.”
Michael234: CVS pharmacies countered what “Market Mavens” can do by removing the unit price from all their merchandise. Now the power of the individual consumer has been quietly marginalized. Only the large and rich businesses and corporations can negotiate the price of an item. To CVS, we are now irrelevant to the marketplace because we are only individuals.
Here is a star wars parody video made for training one of the stores of a new segment. It’s cheesy, but I think current and former employees would find some amusement from it.
@Kwitch:
“We don’t think about our service operating procedure every day and resort back to these stereotypes in order to answer the questions of our customers and help them find the products they want.”
Like hell you don’t. I can tell you that at my store, it’s quite the opposite.
“To be frank, we somewhat scoff at these training materials due to their limitedness and profiling. Most of us realize that there is much, much more to a good customer experience than giving names to stereotypes and guessing what type of person one of our guests are.”
Management at my store never scoffed at lifestyle grouping or ANY training materials. You must be in a district or at least store that’s a bit more lax when it comes to things, and for that you are lucky. You should work in the new stores that have been very successful to get an idea of what Best Buy is trying to become. It’ll trickle down to you eventually; the culture of slowly but surely having everyone turn into some lifestyle grouping services-attaching zombie with a new fixation on branded payments while simultaneously being forced to work within a skeleton crew so managers get even better bonuses (while you get next to nothing), that is.
“And I’m kind of ashamed that you all think we should ‘just die already’ are really being insensitive to the fact that we are real people that actually try to make a rewarding customer experience and help our guests with their questions and needs.”
Seems like you have some common sense at least (although I’m not entirely sure where you’re coming from), but a lot of Best Buys are not like this, and that’s why so many of us pissed off employees and customers feel the need to say BB must “die”. And I can tell you the newer stores that are highly competitive are basically trying to dictate the future of this company through impressive numbers attained by utilizing a brute-force “whatever it takes” approach with the “customer centric” model propped up as some kind of facade. We are not customer centric; that is, we are not a company that disregards short term goals for what’s most important for the customer. If we were truly that, then I wouldn’t be walking into the store every day being told that while services in general are great, we really need to focus on PSP’s right now because it’s “killing us” (more like management’s bonuses and misc. incentives). Perfect example: I sold $700+ worth of services on some computers for a small business customer, only to later be told that while the sale was good, I was ultimately frowned upon for not being able to attach PSP’s. The customer did not want a PSP on anything, and I pitched it many times, primarily so I could better defend myself against management’s typical self-serving bullshit after the sale occured. But it mattered not to them, and so the sale went by largely unnoticed by management because I didn’t attach PSP’s to inflate their already huge bonuses. Great culture, eh?
If all the customer needs is the core product and either nothing or just one other thing with it, then Best Buy (at least my store) seems to have a serious issue with that. And so, they totally contridict themselves. They also look really snobby because meeting a customer’s needs is GREAT… until the customer will not buy anything else regardless of how good or bad the sales associate is doing and what’s being said. To be “customer centric” while at the same time frowning upon customers who get nothing or close to nothing extra with their core product is just kind of funny. It’s like saying “we’re only customer centric when you buy the extra stuff that makes us money.”
“If you’re in a Best Buy store, and you’re not being greeted, asked if you can be helped, or overhear employee’s ever, ever reference a customer by any of these stereotypes; something is wrong there. And As an employee who respects his ability to make an impact on others by amazing them with good service, I appologize if your Best Buy service is anything less.”
We’re ordered to contact customers all the time, to the point where they often get annoyed and become evasive! And many people, especially my former CEM, told me what lifestyle groups he thought my customers were in before handing me off to them.
I am happily no longer a part of Best Buy, but I will continue to point out how poorly they treat their employees, and ultimately, the customer, through their approach to what is, beneath the surface, a highly pretentious, dishonest and aggressive approach to making customers spend a lot of money.
Lots of companies keep customer databses… That’s why you shouldn’t use yoru credit card or sign up for magazines etc lol
This article is complete BS. I just underwent this training. The “stereotypes” are meant to help employees know what certain customers may be looking for. Some people want things that will help them stay in touch with their families better while others go for the high-end, with install, with warranty.
I have not once heard the words “good” or “bad” or anything close to adjectives of that sort used to describe a customer at best buy.
Less focus on the product!? Thats one of my main issues with Best Buy. Years ago, when I would willingly step foot in one, I hated when sales reps tried to sell me something they knew nothing about. The situation where the buyer knows far more about your product than the sales rep is just terrible business practice.