Prince McLeanApple Computer said Wednesday it plans to expand a pilot program aimed at testing Macintosh sales at Best Buy to approximately 50 stores nationwide.
Earlier this spring, Apple began testing sales of its Mac line at 7 Best Buy stores located in the Southern California region, each of which featured a new planogram layout that prominently displayed the systems in a designated area of the retailer's personal computer department.
Apple, which had been evaluating the 7-store pilot, decided just this week on an expansion, executives said during the conference call.
Best Buy had previously indicated that it was prepared to scale the pilot program to the majority of its retail stores if the concept proved to be successful. The retailer operates some 900+ outlets throughout the US, each of which already stocks Apple's iPod digital music players.
Analysts have said a full expansion could generate as much as $400 million in additional Mac sales for the Apple each year.
Meanwhile, Apple said it continues to evaluate a similar pilot program at a handful of Circuit City stores, but had no new information to report.
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31 Comments
This is very interesting. If more than 50% of mac purchases were made by Windows users in the Mac Stores, Best Buy might do better this time around. The Apple brand is much more known and it will be easier to sell to non Mac people who are used to shopping at Best Buy.
This is going to be really good for apple.
I can't wait til the day they have more than half the market share, which would be crazy.
Are they going to put them in Best Buys and/or Circuit Cities near Apple Stores? I sure as hell hope not!! I don't think that they will ever be able to provide the customers the expertise that you get from the Apple Store.
As far as the motivation is concerned, unless Apple gives the salespeople superior bribes (oops, did I say that out loud?!, I mean incentives), the Macs will languish on the shelves like they did last time around.
I have my doubts about this, unless its restricted to areas that have absolutely NO Apple Stores within say 25 miles or any other Mac dealers of note.
BestBuy and Circuit City employees tend to be underpaid, undermotivated pimply-faced teenagers/college students who don't know much about computers, period, and what they do know tends to run along the lines of, "Well I heard that PCs are better, and its got more games, so you don't want a Mac dude."
It's just not a great user experience. Maybe if the nearest Apple Store regularly sent out employees to CC and BB to help train the McKids on Macs, it might be okay?
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You don't even need to offer money. Give the sales people a MacBook to keep (so they can play with and and learn about the machine) or offer iPods as a reward for good sales. Example, every 25 Macs sold you get your choice of a 4 Gig Nano.
"Oh, you wanted an eMachine? Have you thought about one of these Macs over here?"