Being based here in Minneapolis, retail conversations always include Target and Best Buy. Nobody would have guessed three years ago that Best Buy would be celebrating and Target would be struggling at this point! Best Buy has significant support from Samsung along with a general category whose new IoT products require consumer education. The next big challenge is to see how innovative Best Buy (and Target) can get with delivering the expected customer experience while acknowledging shoppers have done the online research (Google’s ZMOT) before walking into the store. Inventory visibility and geomarketing will need to become part of the mandatory in-store elements.

First, Wall Street is a very poor gauge of whether a company is doing well. They reward Amazon for any tiny profit then punish traditional retailers despite profit. There’s no business basis in Wall Street.

But what about Best Buy? We must stop obsessing about store comps. That’s a metric for a past world and the metric we most need to change with online sales evolution. The store now plays a dual role — sales channel but also physical element that increases online sales.

But given how long it takes Wall Street to evolve, it will be another decade before stock prices are based on the more sane view of sales as we evolve beyond the mythology of comps.

Wall Street got it wrong on this one. Given where Best Buy was a few short years ago, the fact that they could manage increased profits on lower sales during a holiday season is a very admirable accomplishment! While I think Best Buy still has potential areas of improvement in their stores (in product assortment and store layout) they are making many positive moves in becoming more customer focused and delivering on omnichannel promises. They are generally price competitive and certainly seem to be executing well on their strategy. Are they 100 percent successful? No, as evidenced by their top-line performance issues, but the path they are on looks to be a good one.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be bullish on Best Buy, beyond their latest quarterly results. As the leader in consumer electronics, they are in the epicenter of IoT and they are focused on leveraging their broad footprint of stores and their technical expertise to be a trusted advisor for consumers.

Last summer they piloted their InHome Advisor services to help consumers set up a home-theater system; improve Wi-Fi speeds; whole-home music streaming; or connecting and controlling various household smart products through a mobile device.

Similar to Amazon’s new in-home IoT Consult services, Best Buy recognizes the importance of getting integrated into consumers’ home technology environment as a trusted advisor. Best Buy seems to be laser focused with a clear customer strategy.