Best Buy Inc CEO sets goals

Best Buy has been struggling to combat a phenomenon known as showrooming, where people visit its stores to look at products and then buy them online for less.

Joly acknowledged the company has suffered from a price perception issue among customers that it needed to address, as well as weakness in its online operations.

The head of the company's digital business said its online conversion rate - which measures how successfully Best Buy translates customer visits into actual sales - was only about half of what it should be.

Many of these problems are a result of our own making, Joly said during the investor presentation.

HOLIDAYS COMING

Best Buy also said on Tuesday that it would pursue a plan to optimize its store footprint on an ongoing basis, which suggested the company may look at ways to shrink or close stores, as some other big-box retailers have done. In late March, the company said it would close 50 large U.S. stores.

Joly warned that merely closing stores would not boost operating income, as most of the big-box stores are already profitable. Relocation to smaller space may be an option, however; he said 71 percent of the large-format stores have leases expiring within the next six years.

The details of Joly's long-awaited plan came roughly a week before the unofficial start of the year's biggest selling season.

The retailer, which has posted declines in same-store sales in eight of the last nine quarters, warned last month it expected earnings

... contd.