Business Analysis: Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Essay

On July 27, 1981, Adam Walsh who was only six years old and his mother, Reve Walsh, went shopping to a Sears Department Store located in a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida, where he disappeared on that same day. His mother left him unattended for about eight minutes at a video game display inside the Sears Department Store and warned him not to wander around, but when she had returned from inquiring to purchase a lamp, Adam was not there anymore. Mrs. Walsh was only about 150 feet away from him when Adam was kidnapped in front of a lot of customers and employees of the Sears store. The movie focuses on the hopelessness of the John and Reve Walsh as they discover that the authorities and the own police department were not being helpful to

J.C. Penney is a retail outlet that operates in many locations globally. It deals with product lines such as clothing, footwear, beauty products, electronics, and jewelry. There are several changes that have taken place in the macro environment that promises to increase the fortunes of the company. The advertisement in technology is one single important factor that has increased the performance of the business (Ali, 2007). The company has an elaborate website through which it uses to tap the online market. In fact, thirty percent of the company’s revenue comes from the website.

The following pages focus on providing a strategic analysis of Sears Holding Corporation. The introduction reveals the issues that the paper addresses. The Company Presentation section reveals important facts in Sears' evolution. The Strategy Debates Section discusses theoretical issues applied to the situation of Sears. This is followed by the Strategic Decisions section that provides a series of recommendations that can help Sears improve its situation. The Implementation Challenges section provides important issues that can be considered challenges of strategic implementation.

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. came up with a productivity incentive plan to raise its profits in its auto centers. The mechanics of the auto centers used to be paid an hourly wage and the service advisors (employees who take orders and consult with the mechanics, then respond and advise the customers) were paid a salary. However, under the new plan, their payment was changed to include a commission component. With this new plan, mechanics and the service advisors were given a goal to sell a certain number of repairs during their shifts. The unethical behavior was derived from the change of compensation plan – the service advisors and the mechanics had mislead their customers and charged them for unnecessary repairs. When the California Department of Consumer Affairs accused Sears, Roebuck, and Co. in the 1192, for violating the Auto Repair Act, the Chairman and the CEO of Sears, Edward Brennan denied that such fraud occurred and said he’d take for actions

HVN has expanded its market overseas, for instance, like New Zealand, Slovenia, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. It may earn more returns from oversea market in the future.

Due to slow sales and less traffic at both Sears and Kmart, the two have decided to merge creating one entity named Sears Holdings. Kmart has agreed to buy Sears for $11 Billion. This puts Sears Holdings at the third largest retailer behind Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Although Wal-Mart is a direct competitor with Kmart, Sears Holdings goal is not to compete with Wal-Mart directly, but find areas that have been overlooked by other retailers, and take advantage of the expanded line of products the new company has to offer. Sears has had higher sales than Kmart, so hundreds of Kmart’s will be transformed into Sears stores. As of now, most of Sears 870 stores are only found in malls. The new strategy would be to open Sears stores in current

Before investing in any business it’s important to conduct a business analysis. This analysis would cover in detail the strengths; weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of a business. This analysis will assist a fund manager with the decision of whether to invest or not. Reynolds is a very dominant company in the tobacco industry. The have various subsidiaries that keeps them on pace with their competitors.

Since 1992 when Arthur C. Martinez was brought on board to head Sears’s retailing operations, credit sales, especially through the use of the company’s own proprietary credit card, boost the sales of the company greatly from 1993 to 1997. The new card accounts between 1993 and 1996 were increasing by roughly a 50% rate every year. Besides the company’s own credit cards, the third

Profitability (performance) ratios are used to assess a company’s ability to create equity as compared to its debt and other appropriate expenses created during a particular time frame. A favorable analysis of profitability ratios will reveal that a company’s value is higher than a competitor’s value.

A recent study done at the University of Chicago by Prof. Curtis Verschoor and published in Management Accounting found that companies with a defined corporate commitment to ethical principles do better financially than companies that don’t make ethics a key management component. Public shaming of Nike’s sweatshop conditions and slave wages paid to overseas workers led to a 27% drop in its earnings several years ago. And recently, the shocking disregard of ethics and subsequent

Leadership is by all means a special talent that not all people possess. A leader must also have ethics to be effective for the long term in the corporate world. These leaders generally implement ethical programs in order to influence an organizations climate (Yukl, 2010). I will evaluate the importance of ethical leadership and the role it plays into today’s organizations. In addition, I will discuss the repercussions a company may have when its leadership allows and even rewards unethical business practices. Lastly, I will apply my personal leadership perspective. My perspective will include the path-goal theory and ethical practices that I find important to

Another limit to ethical behaviour at McDonald’s might be training and discipline within the company. For example, if an experienced employee was selected for a course or was offered a promotion, another employee might find it unfair and discriminative. Similar situation could possibly happen when it comes to discipline, for example a manager would treat employees making the same mistake differently and favour one person more than another. If any of the employees made an official complaint about any of those, it could lead to publicity’s hesitation and bad relations between employees within the company and its suppliers.

The collapse of Enron and all of the questions that arise to try and explain how this company failed, it all comes back to the values of management. The last option on our training plan will provide training in ethics. Enron executives and employees were caught in the desire to report ever-increasing earnings in order to keep stock prices rising, and to protect their jobs and wealth in their retirement plans (,2002).

Newell's corporate strategy was mainly focused on high volume and low cost product to large mass retailer. The goal of the company was to increase its sales and profitability by offering a complete and complementary range of products and reliable service to the mass retail stores. Newell's initial focus was on home and hardware products which later on expended to other markets. The company strategy was to grow and expand its product line through acquisitions, rather than internal growth. Before 1998 Newell acquired different companies in the basic home and hardware products industry and started diversifying into unrelated field such as children products, widow covering, writing instruments and others. The company was also looking to

The overwhelming facts point to a shady underworld of self-dealing and opportunistic exploitation of the poor and working class, which was until recently, well hidden from the commoner. The executives of WorldCom and Enron provide real world examples of unethical business practices, where the desire to make money for their shareholders transcended into an addiction to greed and self-dealing that were displayed by their, “excessive pay, perks, and golden parachutes”(Carson 392) at the expense of all stakeholders. All is not lost, there are corporations that pride themselves in their sound business model and commitment to ethical business practices. Such companies as Eaton Corporation, and Weyerhaeuser, who according to Ethisphere.com, a business ethics watchdog, are among the “2010 World`s most ethical companies.” (Ethisphere)