Dive Brief:

• Best Buy Thursday reported an unexpected Q3 same-store sales jump of 2.2%, when a 2% drop was expected. Online sales rose 22%.

• Despite the nice surprise, CEO Hubert Joly said that holiday sales will likely be flat in an intensely competitive electronics retail environment with added price pressures at the holidays. The retailer hasn’t seen annual same-store sales growth for four years.

• The big-box electronics retailer has aggressively trimmed costs recently and re-configured its stores with features like store-within-a-store and a focus on customer service. 

Dive Insight:

Electronics retailer Best Buy has faced intense competition from e-commerce and discount retailers like Wal-Mart Stores that compete strongly on price. Joly said Thursday that the company will focus more on customer experience and on selling items like ultra high-definition TVs, connected home devices, and wearables, and less on lower-end devices that people could pick up anywhere without much thought.

“The trip to the stores needs to be extraordinary from a customer experience standpoint,” Joly said. Further investments the retailer is making could undermine its cost-cutting efforts, but this recent sales and profit bump could mean that the retailer is on the right path.