Well as a former best buy employee (about 2 years) I can probably help you out. Best Buy arranges their different stores and the products carried at those stores based on stereotypes. They love in their training to explain to you that "each customer is unique" and how its improtant for employees to "meet those unique needs." Immediately after this statement during training they explain to you how every customer could fall into one of a few categories. I'm probably wrong and other best buy employees that come on here could help me, but I think that there are 4 different categories comprised of 8 types of shoppers. They've given them names and describe their buying patterns and what products they want, and theres usually 2 people to a group (a man and a woman). There is basically the uber geeks who want the new stuff, theres the old people who want stuff but don't wanna learn how to use it, theres the lower middle class people who want a great deal (they're usually pictured as hispanic in the training manuals), and then my personal favorite; the rich folks that just wanna spend money. I believe they are called "Jill' and "Barry." (Now I'm getting to the part that may be relevant to you). So a store in your area could be called a "Jill Store." This means that they think a lot of stay at home preggos live in the area and want cute, easy to use electronics. So a Jill Store will carry a lot of point and shoot digital cameras, and they will usually carry those cameras in multiple colors, whereas stores based on other demographics will only carry one color of that camera. They also carry cell phone cases that may be by purse designers like Betsy Johnson whereas other locations will not. I also opened one of the first Best Buy Mobile Stores in the southeast and our training was like 90 hours over 2 weeks. As your article states, the main focus of these mobile stores in malls is to catch female customers. These stores are always set up next to a big box best buy. In fact I could WALK from the mall Best Buy Mobile was in to the other Best Buy in 2 minutes, there was only a gas station between us. So basically, they thought men would go to best buy while women shopped in the mall. So Mobile set up shop right next to the food court on the way into the mall. They explained to us that there plan was to grab the attention of women coming through the mall by having displays of cool new phones and cute accessories for them to look at. It worked I guess, I dunno, but somehow both stores made a lot of money, whereas I thought that one would steal business from the other, but in fact their plan worked. We did get a lot of female shoppers as well as teenagers. While a lot of teens (male) shop at best buy for video games, we got a lot of female and male customers that were mall rats that would call their parents whining to meet them down there and get them an iPhone. Anywho, if you want more info or have questions just let me know. I hope this helped you, sorry if i got off focus.
