Location, Location, Location

By Paul Gagnon, – Director, North American TV Research, DisplaySearch

San Diego, 8:41 am

What a difference location makes. I moved from the Best Buy location in a strip mall that’s convenient, but quiet, to a location in a major local mall. The difference in traffic was more than two-fold. The line inside the major mall location stretched around the inside of the store, but unlike the mass of confusion that typified the Walmart and Target interior lines, the Best Buy line was orderly and even included a store associate located at the tail with a sign that read “End of the Line.”

Both Best Buy locations were moving large volumes of notebook PCs, but not many desktop PCs or mini-notes.  Judging by reports coming in from other DisplaySearch Black Friday reporters, the situation is similar.  The most popular TVs were 32″ LCD TVs and some smaller big screens like 40″ models from Samsung and Insignia.  It sounds like Samsung’s Early Bird special for its 46″ LED TV ($1,399) was also very popular.

I also visited Office Depot and Staples locations (as did DisplaySearch’s president!) and noticed much slower traffic than at the Big Box locations.  At my local Office Depot, most were going for the $299 HP notebook.