Technology is certainly making our lives a whole lot easier, and one of the best things to have happened should be online shopping. Although it has been around for a while, it has started to become a lot more convenient all thanks to a new way to shop for products. All you have to do is scan an item from an ad with your smartphone on your way somewhere, and the product gets shipped to your home later on.

The scan-now-buy-later way of shopping of course is not new. One of the earliest advertisements of this service was on the subway platforms in South Korea, and then it spread across Europe. And recently, US retailer Giant started advertising their Peapod online shopping service on the train platforms.

So instead of playing games on your smartphone while you wait for your train, you can use the handset to do some shopping. You just have to open the Peapod app on your device and scan codes from an image of products on photo shelves. The products will be delivered to your doorstep later, and that will definitely save you a lot of time.

But, all this is also a way to sell more products. If a customer won’t manage to find time to come to the products, retailers will make sure that the products go to the customers.

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That’s the notion being put forth by Larry Downes of Forbes Magazine. Despite the slow bleed out from other electronic competitors, Best Buy actually saw its market share drop with a corresponding 40% drop in stock value last year. WSJ said that the “worst is yet to come” for Best Buy.

But why is that? One idea put forth has to do with customer service. You can generally categorize customers in one of two groups. There are the self-service types who know exactly what they want and don’t need any help. These are the folks that may rather turn to online shopping, or in the case of my local Vancouver area, a store like NCIX. Then, there are the folks who do want some customer service and guidance. The trouble is that Best Buy isn’t providing “customer service,” according to Downes. It’s “anti-service” because the associates are too busy upselling, suggestive selling, and cross-selling. That’s “in lieu of actual training on either the products or effective sales.”

And let’s not forget about the Apple Store. Best Buy has run out of that unique selling proposition, it seems, and it’s just going to be a slow and gradual death with customers leaking out to other channels. What do you think? Is Best Buy joining Circuit City to the pits? What can it do to attract customers again? Or will it be deemed “too big to fail” and get a government bailout?  What’s your experience at Best Buy?

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