Bed Bath & Beyond Repair?

Bed Bath & Beyond has been on a downward spiral for quite some time and it’s doing everything to hang on to the customers they still have while trying to bring back customers that have taken their wallets elsewhere. 

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a company struggle to regain their footing and it certainly won’t be the last. 

We’ve seen the likes of Toys R Us and JC Penney fall prey to the ever-evolving market and consumer demand. 

And, interim CEO Mary Winston isn’t turning a blind eye to the fact that the company is on a free fall towards failure. 

“The company has not kept pace with how the customer has evolved and how consumers shop today.”

This quote points directly to the need for businesses, no matter how big or small, to understand their customer opportunity. 

In the case of Bed Bath & Beyond, it’s becoming more apparent that they haven’t take n the necessary measures to stay competitive with companies like Walmart, Target, and of course, Amazon to give their consumers what they want. 

The latter companies realized that their target audiences demanded convenience and affordable pricing. 

With that information in mind, they delivered by developing private labels and offering cheaper shipping options. 

By understanding their customer opportunity, these brands were able to give their key target markets what they wanted, when they wanted. 

Even to this day, the prices at Bed Bath & Beyond are about 10 percent higher than their competition.

No BS Marketing Approach to Bed Bath & Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years (16 of which Steven Temeras was CEO).

In my opinion, they need to adapt by changing their model to encourage more engagement (both in-store and digital/social/online) with their target customers.

There are still people out there that enjoy physically going to the store because they like the atmosphere and the ability to touch and feel products. 

But, more times than not, people enjoy the quickness and convenience that online shopping provides. 

Bed Bath & Beyond needs to make a move to address this through creative marketing by…

1. Drilling deep into their key target markets by segmenting with more variables. 
2. Finding out what they think, feel, and want through ongoing marketing intel/research.
3. Developing creative marketing solutions based on what they learned by combining the art and science of marketing
4. Pulling it all together to tell the new Bed Bath & Beyond story to those target audiences again and again.

I’m a preacher and practitioner of understanding your customer opportunity and identifying your Big Idea and then building effective messaging around it. 

The current state of the union for Bed Bath & Beyond shows that they haven’t taken these steps into account to effectively and efficiently communicate with their key target market. 

The extinction clock is ticking and the question remains, is it Bed Bath & Beyond repair?