This may not come as a shock to you: Best Buy reduces its customer base to 4 target customer profiles. Rather than regurgitate them for you, I’ll let Best Buy’s own slide deck speak for the company:

I don’t know how much Best Buy spent to arrive at this result, but it’s interesting that they were able to narrow it down to these 4. Further, ask yourself: does MY company have its markets embodied into profiles like Best Buy does, and, If not, shouldn’t it? I don’t know how Best Buy measures its success WITH these profiles vs. WITHOUT (how does it know that its increased sales are the result of having these profiles vs. one or many other factors?), but it certainly can’t hurt.

So…Are you a Ray, Barry, Maria or Helen type?

The rest of this very interesting profiling deck can be found at [1] http://consumerist.com/photogallery/bestbuylifestyles/