While Best Buy saw its domestic revenue decline by 2.4%, its online revenue increased by 22% or $581 million in the second quarter, the company said in a press release.
Best Buy attributes this increase to substantially improved inventory availability made possible by chain-wide rollout of its ship-to-store capabilities in January. Other key factors include a higher average order value and increased traffic driven by a greater investment in online digital marketing.
“We continued to see a shift in consumer behavior as people are increasingly researching and buying online,” Best Buy president and CEO Hubert Joly, said in the release. “As a result, traffic to our brick-and-mortar stores continued to decline, yet our in-store conversion and online traffic continued to increase due to the execution of our Renew Blue strategy which is in direct alignment with this shift.”
Joly added Renew Blue is designed to grow Best Buy’s online business, enhance the in-store customer experience and leverage its multichannel capabilities.
Best Buy’s international revenue was down $1.31 billion or 12.1% in the quarter. The decline was primarily driven by a 6.7% drop in comparable stores sales, primarily in China, Canada and Mexico, the negative impact of foreign currency rate fluctuations and the loss of revenue from large-format store closures in China.