Circuit City

Circuit City was a retailer that sold many electronics such as tv's, stereos, phones, and cameras. Circuit City was the number two retailer in the U.S. for electronics, but in November Circuit City had to file for bankruptcy. The company said that due to economic challenges, they had no choice but to liquidate and that they hope to come back from their bankruptcy as a stronger company (Circuit City, Breaking News). There are many factors that come into play, and there is not just one reason that Circuit City failed.

The closing of Circuit City can be blamed on reasons such as location, no more selling of appliances, and passing up hugh opportunities. Circuit City was said to have bad locations because they were in places that were far away for consumers, and just "out-of-the-way". A setback for them was that they stopped selling appliances, so that made less reasons for customers to want to go there, and they missed a major opportunity to be able to sign with Apple products. Since they passed up that contract, Best Buy took it and is now the number 1 electronics retailer in the U.S. (Hamilton, Time Magazine).

Another major setback for Circuit City was that they did not have an effective website. Online retailing is very important to this new generation of technology. They were unable to keep up with the online competition. A main reason that people say that Circuit City went out of business was because of poor management and bad customer service. Apparently the new CEO of the company thought that getting rid of the older employees that had been with the company for many years would cut costs, and they could hire new employees for a fraction of the cost. Because of this strategy, there have been many complaints about the employees at Circuit City.

I personally believe that Circuit City went under because they were not able to keep up with the changing times. They didn't change much about their marketing, or advertisements, and pretty much kept things the same throughout their sixty years of business. I feel that if they had better marketing strategies, and better employees, they would still have a chance even through these challengings economic times.