Business

Crowded Best Buy stores fuel hopes for a turnaround

Best Buy wasn’t delivering turkeys on Thanksgiving.

The nation’s biggest electronics chain — believed by many only a year ago to be headed for extinction — is staging a credible comeback, with analysts citing brisk traffic over the crucial Thanksgiving weekend.

Lines of shivering shoppers snaked around Best Buy locations on the Upper West Side and Union Square Thursday evening, lured by deals on laptops, TVs and video-game consoles.

Such events typically are anecdotal evidence at best, but industry experts say they’re a signal that the chain is hitting back at the “showrooming” phenomenon of recent years, in which wallet-conscious shoppers have browsed gadgets at Best Buy stores only to buy them cheaper online at sites like Amazon.

Best Buy strove to match the rock-bottom prices at competitors like Amazon, Walmart and Target, according to CEO Hubert Joly, a former restaurant exec who was tapped last year to lead the turnaround.

“We are comfortable with price comparisons, online or in-store,” Joly told The Post.

Indeed, the retailer has embraced the showrooming phenomenon and has even taken advantage of it with stores that are better-stocked with a wider range of merchandise this year, says Citi analyst Kate McShane.

This year’s Black Friday flier showed a wider selection of products in three key categories: TVs, PCs, and tablets and e-readers, McShane said in a research note. Best Buy also created shops-in-shops for 500 Windows stores, Google kiosks in 750 stores and upward of 1,400 Samsung Experience shops.

It also offered incentives to visit stores by doling out points to shoppers at its website, said Sarah Cunningham, managing director at marketing firm TPN.

“They know that with electronics, the ease of touch and feel and seeing it in action is really important,” Cunningham said.

Nevertheless, Best Buy continues to lose business to Walmart and Amazon, and not all analysts are convinced that trend can be reversed. Last week, Best Buy’s stock took a dive after it warned stiff price competition is likely to hit margins.

Still, Best Buy appeared to be among the winners on Black Friday, as more shoppers hunted down bargains with mobile phones and tablets. Other strong competitors included Walmart and Macy’s, analysts said.

At the Macy’s flagship on Herald Square, 15,000 shoppers swarmed outside for an 8 p.m. opening, versus 11,000 a year earlier for a midnight opening.

“Clearly people are in the shopping mood,” Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren said.

Whether a strong Black Friday weekend translates into a strong holiday season remains a topic for debate, and not all stores appeared to be doing uniformly well.

At JCPenney, “the traffic was there, but the bags weren’t,” said Brian Sozzi of Belus Capital Advisors.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Richard Jaffe predicts apparel sales industrywide will be up only “modestly” during the holidays, citing spotty business at chains including Abercrombie & Fitch and Urban Outfitters.