Most Growth in Sales Goes to Direct Marketers
As sale figures for Christmas season are tallied, traditional consumer electronics retailers are reporting bad news: consumer has fallen out of love with home computer store; while sales of home computers rose nearly 15 percent in fourth quarter, they fell 23 percent at such stores, with Circuit City Stores, Tandy Corp and Best Buy Co among retailers reporting poor results; analysts say winners are companies that market directly to consumers, like Gateway 2000 and Dell Computer; say explanation for shift is that retailers appear to be victims of their own success; note that today an estimated 65 percent of all home computers are sold to people who already own one personal computer or more and that sophisticates are shunning stores that introduced them to computing; graphs on sales by Circuit City, CompUSA, Dell Computer and Gateway 2000 (M)
