Best Buy online outlet store offers sales

Best Buy is now offering clearance, refurbished and open-box prodiucts, including video game hardware and software, for a discount on its own online outlet website. The video game site is located here.

Typically, here is the breakdown of how retail stores name these types of items:

Clearance: Items that have been discontinued and are put on sale to “clear the shelves.”

Refurbished: Items that have been returned and, if there were defects, have been repaired.

Open-box: Items that were opened and used as in-store demonstrations or simply returned by purchasers.

According to a story on 247wallst.com, “It’s worth noting that Best Buy also accepts returns on products sold at the outlet store exactly as it does for new items. The standard return period for most products is 15 days...”

The introduction of an online outlet site begs the question, what are Best Buy's future intentions? Is this just a measure to give them another retail outlet for their own equipment, or do they intend to follow companies such as GameStop, which make an increasingly greater portion of profits from buying back hardware and software from users and reselling them?