Best Buy IdeaX

[#1]

That way if you know what you want you can setup an appointment with a blue shirt for faster checkout service and better advice on a product. Would kind of defeat the purpose of in store pickup though, But hey, if the Apple Store has appointments on their floor for specialists to help you, so can Best Buy

[#2]

Interesting idea. Sounds kinda like a personal shopping assistant. Would anyone else like to see this happen?

[#3]

It is an interesting option, but given the level of knowledge in my local stores of products I buy I would pass on this. This would be a hard sale to corporate also, as you would have to hire very knowledgeable sales personnel for various fields (apple has a limited product line while BBY carries a vast array of products). The more knowledge, most likely the higher the pay. While I do think it would work on small scale (like you have been trying to do with Videogames and gaming specialists), you would have to be very selective in which fields. I would assume it would be appliances, TVs, Computers and Games as your specialists would cover. The key and lynchpin to this would be that every store that has these "specialists" would have to be extremely knowledgable in that field. If not you will just be shooting yourself in the foot as a specialist that is only semi-knowledgable and is wrong 15% of the time will be a laughing stock. I ran into this with a supposed geek squad specialist in the TV department. The store called this guy to the back as a specialist to talk with a customer. He was answering questions about TVs and had wrong answer after wrong answer. This gentleman was about to spend money on a plasma TV for a poolside mount, because the specialist guarunteed him it was the best picture (VT30). Spouting specs and black levels. I waited for the specialist to stop for a minute until I spoke up before this guy bought a TV that he would not like. For those that don't know Plasma TVs (the vt30 is plasma) don't do well in well lit areas.