Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer-electronics retailer, canceled some customers’ online orders after it ran out of popular merchandise.
“Overwhelming demand of hot product offerings” on BestBuy led to the cancellations, said Lisa Hawks, a spokeswoman for the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer, on Thursday in an e-mail. She declined to disclose the number of orders that won’t be filled or to identify the items.
The canceled orders covered the weekend after Thanksgiving, when Best Buy stepped up discounts against and Walmart. Best Buy promoted “aggressively online,” leading to higher traffic, chief executive Brian Dunn told analysts Dec. 13.
“I presume it’s not particularly material, but the bad press is enough to scare some people away from ordering online at Best Buy in the future, so it’s not positive,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, on Thursday by e-mail. Bloomberg News Service
