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Tilly Analyzes Restructuring of Best Buy

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Urban Planning Chair Chris Tilly spoke to Retail Dive about the internal reorganization of Best Buy following a recent large wave of layoffs. The company has been struggling to compete against generalist stores, such as Walmart and Target, as well as Amazon. Over the last decade, Best Buy said it prized a “human-centric approach” focusing on the company’s front-line workers, but it recently cut many full-time employees in favor of part-time staff who are expected to be knowledgeable about all areas of the store. “It’s clear that the entire store-based consumer electronics industry has faced incredible pressure from online sales,” Tilly said. “The fact that Best Buy survived and bounced back is miraculous, when a lot of other companies were going down.” The pandemic made competition even tougher by shifting more things online. “If you’re just competing with online sales, what is the difference between Best Buy and Amazon?” Tilly asked.

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Matute on Improving Public Transit Apps

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the growing role of technology in public transit service. New York, London and Los Angeles are releasing new apps and digital versions of their subway maps, which give riders access to information about how close a train is to their station as well as any closures or delays. Matute explained that the new platforms are designed with more focus on the user experience than some predecessors, which first appeared on app stores around 2010 and were often neglected by transit agencies afterward. “These apps just fell out of favor and ended up being removed from the marketplace,” he said. The growth of ride-share services like Lyft and Uber and competition with other navigation apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps has prompted public transit agencies to invest resources in improving the digital experience for riders.

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DeShazo on Future of Clean Vehicles in the U.S.

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JR DeShazo, director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was featured in a Popular Science article about General Motors’ announcement that it plans to eliminate emissions from passenger vehicles by 2035. “This is a seismic event that is hard to overstate in its importance to America’s transition to zero-emission vehicles,” DeShazo said. The company hopes to expand its electric vehicle fleet to 30 all-electric models and have 40% of the entire fleet composed of battery-electric cars by 2025. According to DeShazo, these plans are the strongest thus far to come from a traditional American automaker. While international companies like Volvo and BMW have announced similar goals, the U.S. industry has lagged behind. GM’s statement is going to force other automakers to respond, which will stimulate competition in the industry, DeShazo explained.  However, he added, the adoption of zero-emission vehicles must go hand in hand with investment in renewable energy sources in order to effectively combat climate change.

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