The first Roku Ready devices hitting store shelves this holiday season are televisions from Apex Digital, Hitachi and Insignia, a Best Buy brand.
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The guys are being who they are, the brand is being itself, both in style and message, and the piece helps to underscore what makes the Best Buy brand different in a way people care about.
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But this is Best Buy, a brand that is very well known and instantly recognized.
Best Buy conducts online retail operations under a variety of brand names such as Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, The Carphone Warehouse, Five Star, Future Shop, Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, PacificSales and The Phone House.
You might say that Walmart would never, ever start hawking its own e-readers, but crazier things have happened -- Best Buy has an entire brand devoted to in-house goods, and Amazon itself has expanded from an online storefront for laundry detergent and bestselling novels to a bona fide hardware mainstay.
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On larger priced items, Best Buy needs to use its marketing power to partner with strategic suppliers to create unique offerings that are only available through Best Buy (either their own brand or an exclusive with an existing brand).
There are many inexpensive models to choose from including store brands from places like Best Buy, which sells its own Insignia brand.
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To put this in perspective, during the PC era (which lasted for 20 years) this would have been the equivalent of combining Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Best Buy into one firm, selling one brand.
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Rask: Every brand, from Starbucks to Best Buy, will have fiercely loyal enthusiasts that will install their apps.
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Bottomline, Best Buy had probably the roughest year of any major market cap brand in 2012.
Best Buy gives them an opportunity to move on from being a brand of substance (i.e. makes good phones) to one of emotion (i.e. connects with customers).
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This move is likely to make the Geek Squad a stand-alone brand in itself, and open up a new stream of revenues for Best Buy.
This year, retail giant Best Buy confirmed that it sold autorun virus-infected digital picture frames under its in-house brand, Insignia.
Now that the alleged Sony Nexus phone has been exposed as a fake we don't know if there will be any surprises left, but if you want to buy anything from Google's brand then patience (or at least shopping around) is probably your best strategy.
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