Only a few years ago, RadioShack was known as a multibillion dollar company and one of the nation’s largest retailers of electronics. The business was started by two young brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann from London, England in 1921. The brothers opened the initial store in downtown Boston to provide the public with radio equipment, sales and services. In addition, the company was a leading provider of “ham” radio and ship radio equipment to consumers. RadioShack would grow slightly as a very small regional chain supplier in the Northeastern United States, while also introducing and providing a mail order service of radio equipment to customers.
As the company grew to nine stores over time, they became the leading provider for electric …show more content…
The products were known to have great quality and along with superior design. Do to the low cost, RadioShack was more visible amongst the tech savvy consumers. More customers were able to shop and build relationships with RadioShack employees due to the price and availability of product. Having better prices then the competition at the time also allowed the company to have over 7000 stores (Schnurman, 2014). Along with offering a technology products the company began to build a relation with wireless providers, which made RadioShack more conventional in the consumer …show more content…
In 2003 RadioShack had more than 7,000 outlets, 1,500 kiosks, and 47,000 employees that they advertised were within a 5-minute drive of 94% of Americans (Schnurman, 2014). A true competitive advantage is one that provides value to the customer that others cannot duplicate or would cost them too much to replicate (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2015, pg. 5). This was unable to be duplicated by direct competitors like Circuit City and Best Buy because these stores were much larger due to carrying a wider variety of products. The expense to open as many stores as RadioShack would have been too much to overcome and meant that RadioShack was the king of locations. The sheer amount of stores allowed them to sell convenience at a lower price than other big box stores could match. It became the store that consumers ran to in order to replace electronics quickly, akin to running to Home Depot to get parts to repair a leaky faucet (Yahoo.com, 2015). They built on this convenience by selling the aforementioned RadioShack branded merchandise that increased brand loyalty and encouraged return visits. At the height of their advantage RadioShack became part of the neighborhood and where the go to store for all electronic needs and questions (Kim, 2015). This advantage alone allowed RadioShack to manage
As the company grew to nine stores over time, they became the leading provider for electric …show more content…
The products were known to have great quality and along with superior design. Do to the low cost, RadioShack was more visible amongst the tech savvy consumers. More customers were able to shop and build relationships with RadioShack employees due to the price and availability of product. Having better prices then the competition at the time also allowed the company to have over 7000 stores (Schnurman, 2014). Along with offering a technology products the company began to build a relation with wireless providers, which made RadioShack more conventional in the consumer …show more content…
In 2003 RadioShack had more than 7,000 outlets, 1,500 kiosks, and 47,000 employees that they advertised were within a 5-minute drive of 94% of Americans (Schnurman, 2014). A true competitive advantage is one that provides value to the customer that others cannot duplicate or would cost them too much to replicate (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2015, pg. 5). This was unable to be duplicated by direct competitors like Circuit City and Best Buy because these stores were much larger due to carrying a wider variety of products. The expense to open as many stores as RadioShack would have been too much to overcome and meant that RadioShack was the king of locations. The sheer amount of stores allowed them to sell convenience at a lower price than other big box stores could match. It became the store that consumers ran to in order to replace electronics quickly, akin to running to Home Depot to get parts to repair a leaky faucet (Yahoo.com, 2015). They built on this convenience by selling the aforementioned RadioShack branded merchandise that increased brand loyalty and encouraged return visits. At the height of their advantage RadioShack became part of the neighborhood and where the go to store for all electronic needs and questions (Kim, 2015). This advantage alone allowed RadioShack to manage