Best Buy news2

Best Buy Co. is daring bargain hunters to use its stores as showrooms.

With four weeks to go before Thanksgiving, the big-box retailer is running television ads that tout its stores as “the ultimate holiday showroom,” playing on the phenomenon in which shoppers visit traditional retailers to check out products and then leave to buy them online for less.

That’s a big reversal from last year. Concerns that Best Buy BBY +0.32%  was losing sales to online retailers at alarming rates sent its shares plunging toward single digits. Analysts warned that the company’s 1,400 stores were becoming little more than a testing ground for Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN -3.54%  customers. And Best Buy interim Chief Executive G. Mike Mikan made it his top priority to combat “showrooming” before handing the reins to current CEO Hubert Joly.

Joly began his tenure in September of last year, claiming to “love showrooming.” These days Best Buy executives are embracing the term with even more swagger, saying they have put in place strategies from price matching to customer-service improvements that will convert more shoppers into buyers. In the past year, Best Buy’s profit has increased and its shares have soared.