Checkout
Best Buy Tests Smaller Shopping Areas to Focus on E-Commerce
- Less space is used for shoppers; more goes to digital orders
- Additional markets to get test as pandemic shifts habits
This article is for subscribers only.
Best Buy Co. is expanding its test of a new store format that reduces the space for customers to browse by nearly half to focus more on getting digital orders out the door, according to people familiar with the move.
The electronics retailer’s experiment is the latest example of how retailers are tweaking their business models to cope with the sharp uptick in e-commerce during the pandemic. The company plans to shift stores in one or two more markets to the new setup, reducing square footage used for shoppers to about 15,000 square feet from an average of 27,000 square feet, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move hasn’t been announced.