Market Focus on Gender Leads to Improved Business at Best Buy - Building Gender Balanced Business

In 2005, Julie Gilbert, a VP at US electronics retailer, Best Buy, launched a new movement to enable the company to capture more of the women’s market and the female talent pool. In the five years that followed, revenue generated by females at the stores increased by more than $4.4 billion.

Gilbert was at the time responsible for rolling-out the Magnolia Home Theatre stores, a set of products that were aimed at the high-end male consumer.

What Inspired Gilbert to Create WOLF
Then three experiences acted as a catalyst for her to launch what became known as WOLF (Women’s Leadership Forum), which invited women and some men from inside and outside the company to come together in small packs to discuss ways to improve the customer experience.

The first of Gilbert’s realisations in 2005 was that women did not feel that they had a future at the company. They were so pleased to see Gilbert, an exception to the rule in a company dominated by men in senior positions, visit their stores, that they went up to her and hugged her.

Second, Gilbert discovered that some women executives actually “hated” her, according to a male colleague. The name WOLF for the movement that followed was in part inspired by Gilbert’s desire to see women work together co-operatively rather than snipe at each other in this way.

The third issue that changed Gilbert’s outlook was her increasing realisation that women were a significant market force that the company was largely failing to capture.

WOLF’s Metrics
Gilbert’s WOLF model that she went on to lead at Best Buy until 2009 had three key metrics: female generated revenue, the retention of women staff, and the recruitment of female talent.

In some cases, women were leaving at a rate of more than 200% higher than men and 91% of the women at Best Buy at that time were at ranks below supervisor. No female executives existed in the retail field and the highest ranking woman was a district manager.

The CEO Brad Anderson, who attended the very first WOLF event in July 2005, said to Gilbert: “You have started a fire that no one will ever put out!”

Improving the Customer Experience for Women
Previously, when helping to sell the home theatre experience, Gilbert had proved that focusing on the women’s market had a bottom line impact. She piloted new in-store boutiques which sold the electronics goods in a more experiential way, building on the connection between the products and the home experience. The stores, for example, set-up living-room displays that showcased the electronics and the entertainment environment.

Training Sales Staff
Salespeople were also given training to interact with female customers, who they had previously ignored. Gilbert claims that couples responded well to this new service, sometimes purchasing more high-end products as a result. She said that returns and exchanges of purchases made by couples were 60% lower than those made by men.

Roll-out of WOLF
Subsequently, Gilbert was employed by Best Buy to roll-out WOLF. Each pack consisted of about 25 women and two men. In 2007, the movement was expanded to include women consumers who were invited to offer their views on how the stores could be improved. One of these groups actually helped to design a new store in Parker, Colorado in 2008, which was a success in terms of business outcomes and customer experience.

The bottom line results
The WOLF initiative at Best Buy (Gilbert left the company in 2009 to develop the idea beyond) had some clear business impacts:

• Revenue generated by females increased by more than $4.4 billion in less than five years of the programme.
• Female market share increased from 14.7% in the first quarter of 2006 to 17.1% in the same quarter in 2008.
• Female recruits increased by more than 37% in areas where Wolf Packs existed.
• The number of women in the company grew by more than 18%.
• Female district managers increased by 300%.
• Women executives appointed to run two out of eight Best Buy territories in the US.

Sources: Professor Bettina Buechel, Developing Wolf, IMD Case Study, 2009. (IMD-3-2098); Heifetz, R, Grashow, A, & Linsky, M, Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009.