Hi Dave,
You're right, the mark-up is massive. As for the proportion of sales, everyone here knows Woolies is hell bent on clearing any line that isn't earning its keep on the shop floor so I believe the sales of those items are meeting expectations and no doubt the GP still helps to balance out the bottom line from selling low GP consumer elect items.
From a personal point of view we ( in our store ) sell quite a reasonable quantity of components considering. Obviously I can't speak for the other DSE stores and have idea of what their component sales may be, but we seem to do ok. I think we're lucky though, the guys I work with aren't pimply faced 16 year olds, we're all old enough to know that a record was once something played on an amplifier with phono inputs :) Myself and the manager have component knowledge while the other staff can at least point people to the right area of the store or get one of us to assist. None of us claim to be electronics gurus but we try to help where and when we can.
Infact, slowly but surely, we're redoing the component section of our store because previous management there has been less than enthusiastic about the area and let it run down badly.
So, yes, there are still some DSE employees who care about the component side of the business :)
Mike