Best Buy

Until Steve Jobs died, Best Buy was plotting a familiar course for its Super Bowl ad: hiring a celebrity spokesman. Then with all the tributes after the Apple founder's death, Best Buy's U.S. marketing chief, Drew Panayiotou, realized Silicon Valley inventors are today's stars.

Best Buy is hoping to do in the electronics market what other retailers and manufacturers have done in the appliances market — promote energy efficiency. In fact, Best Buy believes this will give it competitive edge against the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.

Retail Online Integration has compiled a collection of the best tweets from the National Retail Federation's BIG Show. From tips to trends to breaking news to opinions, enjoy the best of the best from the Twitterverse.

Best Buy's failure to fulfill many online orders in time for Christmas exposed ongoing problems that haven't been resolved. Best Buy is often a target of complaints about late and unfulfilled orders and is "the only major store who routinely has these kinds of issues," says Brad Wilson, founder of BradsDeals.com.

As is always the case this time of year, I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering Best Buy. Most of the year, the superstore sits up on that hill near where I live, monolithic, and I don’t go near it. But as December and January contain both the holidays, and both of my children’s birthdays, it becomes, however briefly, a frequent stopping-off point for purchasing DVDs, games and, of course, electronics.

Following botched holiday web orders and a scathing media critique about the brand's strategy posted on Forbes.com, Best Buy has been feeling the heat lately. The consumer electronics retailer's CEO, Brian Dunn, posted a frank response on the company blog to address critics and reassure employees.

With a vast array of products, product pages, categories and themes, personalized party products retailer Shindigz was faced with the daunting task of manually merchandising products and providing product recommendations across its four websites, including brands Stumps Party, American Prom and SpiritLine. Shindigz sought a product recommendation platform that integrated data, wisdom of the crowd and click behavior to streamline and automate recommendations across multiple shopping channels.

After a slew of online orders were cancelled in November and December when Best Buy couldn’t keep up with demand, the company issued the following statement: “What was wrong is that there was an unacceptable delay between order confirmations and cancellations, and for that we are very sorry,” said Susan Busch, senior director of Best Buy’s public relations.

While the twinkling lights and tinsel make 2011 seem like a typical year for holiday shopping, the truth is it's not. The biggest difference this year is with consumers themselves, specifically where and how they spend their money and how retailers are competing for those dollars.

San Francisco -- The 15 cities with the most shopping activity on Black Friday 2011 were Manhattan, N.Y.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Brooklyn, N.Y.; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; Chicago; San Diego; Houston; Atlanta; Dallas; Saint Louis; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; and Minneapolis, according to mint.com, an online personal finance site. The 10 national merchants with the most shopping activity on Black Friday, mint.com reported, were Apple, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Target, Wal-Mart, Gap, Old Navy and Amazon. After comparing user spend from Black Friday 2011 to last year’s spend, Mint.com found that: Atlanta, New York and Houston