With every industry anxious for how AI will impact the job market, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said one of the retailer’s largest investments in the past three years was in labor.
This investment in labor includes more associates, more in-home advisors who help customers inside their homes and more vendor expertise, Barry said on Jan. 6 at the CES 2026 tradeshow in Las Vegas.
“We can see it in the consumer feedback that associate availability — that ability to talk to someone — is crucial,” she said.
Barry emphasized the “human element” throughout her presentation in regards to personalization, retail media and experiential marketing.
“This conversation too often becomes about ‘When will it be AI and when will it be a human,’” Barry said. “AI at its most human is a partnership with a person. It can be a tool that helps, but I’m trying to figure out as a human, what is it about your home that is uniquely yours? What are the types of devices you had? What are you trying to accomplish?”
Best Buy Uses Shopper Data In the Device Purchase Cycle
As a consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy knows that consumers are typically upgrading a device they have, such as a smart TV, or are investing in a new technology. In either scenario, the retailer needs to ensure its focus is on what that customer needs for their life, not about the latest technology that is in the newest product, Barry said.
In that regard, the shopper may have purchased their previous computer from Best Buy, and the retailer needs to ensure that the shopper comes back to Best Buy to buy their next computer.
“Brand loyalty, it is fleeting these days,” Barry said. “You have to be focused on how you keep that customer completely entrenched in your brand because it’s very, very easy to lose a customer with literally just one subpar experience.”
At Best Buy, the merchant is “maniacal” about the customer experience, and routinely talks to customers and employees to identify where customer trust breaks down or what the brand does well, Barry said.
Retailers also need to ensure they are using the customer data that they do have — such as the computer purchase data from six years ago — and use it to their advantage by telling a story about what matters to that individual consumer.
“If I know you have a computer that is six years old, and I know what operating system you’re trying to run, I actually genuinely know you’re probably having a suboptimal experience,” Barry said. “I genuinely can help you get value for trading in that old device, get you into a new one and you are going to feel better and it will be a more enjoyable experience. So the data is interesting. The question is, what are you going to choose to do with it?”
The Power of Stores
Similar to how the conversation today is about how much AI versus how much human, a few years ago the battleground was around whether ecommerce would take over all stores.
As time has gone on, consumers still shop in stores despite conducting many tasks digitally. Many retailers, including Best Buy, have found that online retail and store retail work the best when they work together. Ecommerce is a large share of Best Buy’s business. In 2016, only 15% of Best Buy’s business was online, and a decade later it’s double that.
“It can’t be about stores versus online versus in the home versus the mobile app,” Barry said.
Plus, 45% of Best Buy’s online sales are picked up in store, Barry said. This is key as it reduces fulfillment costs and brings more consumers into the store for additional purchases.
Stores Need To Be Experiential
In a post-COVID world, where consumers have high expectations for the online experience, shoppers also now have high expectations when they do shop in stores, Barry said.
“The future is much more experiential [with] much higher standards for what that in-store physical experience feels like,” Barry said. “While consumers are looking for value, they’re really looking for confidence, especially in our space.”
Best Buy also finds that Gen Z shoppers are some of the most interested in store experience. For example, the retailer did a midnight store opening when it started selling the Nintendo Switch 2 and there were shoppers standing around the block waiting for the store to open. Many of the consumers who were standing in line already had a pre-order and knew they would get the device, but they wanted the experience, Barry said.
“They were still in line at midnight because they wanted that joy of gaming,” she said. “And so I think there’s a real opportunity. Yes, they’re very device-oriented, but it’s also, they appreciate those real social moments. And embracing that and deciding what our role is to play in that is really powerful.”
