Sears Case Study

Sears and Wal-Mart are both nationwide retailers, but their similarities are only skin deep. Sears started to lose its dominance in the early 1980s. In an attempt to boost the dwindling market share, Sears started to issue proprietary Sears Card, which gave customers payment flexibilities. A new slogan focusing on the "softer side of Sears", and a revised product mix, were created to appeal to the middle-class female shoppers.

All companies have core competencies that they use to differentiate their company, product, or service from the competition, Sears is no exception. Also, it is common for a company’s core competencies to change, as their industry progresses through phases and shifts its emphasis between product and process innovations (Regis University, 2011), Sears is no exception. Yet, when a company’s core competencies become misaligned and no longer supports their strategic intent the business is in danger of becoming obsolete (Regis University, 2011), as their customers no longer perceive the unique benefits the company has

led to a shortage of available workers and therefore a demand of labor which could only be fully

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

owners desperately needed workers but did not want to have to pay them because that meant

Johnson established a quota on temporary hires. The quota was at 25 percent and the quota was met, but there was still no

JCPenny was founded in April 1902 by James Cash Penny. The objective of JC Pennys is simple, to provide products to meet each and everyone’s’ needs. The stores have switch to promoting their house brands more than promoting brands that a shopper can get elsewhere. By promoting their house brands, JCPennys feels like they can increase sales because a shopper would have to go to Pennys to get those brands. The company is endorsing what they refer to as the omnichannel. This is the cohesiveness between stores and online to increase the ease of shopping for the consumer. Now the financial objectives are as follows,” the company provided financial performance estimates for the 2017-2019 period, as follows: Compounded annual comparable sales growth anticipated to be 3.0 %; Gross margin is expected to improve 75-100 basis points; Additional SG&A expense leverage of 215-240 basis points; Net income is expected to be between $450-500M by 2019; Earnings per share of $1.40-1.55 by 2019.” (JCPenny, 2016) I know that the company has tried many times to create a new image because they are struggling to meet the demand of the modern shopper. These latest objectives I

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.

1. What ratios are MOST important in assessing current and predicting future value creation for Sears? For Wal-Mart?

Sears was split into retailing, service, and credit businesses. The retailing segment consisted of the

In 1897 Sebastian Spering Kresge opened five-dime stores in Memphis and Detroit with John McCrorey as his partner. Two years later the partnership broke up and each person kept one city. Mr. Kresge kept the Detroit store and began expanding from there onward. In 1912 the company became incorporated as S.S. Kresge and was the 2nd largest dime store chain with 85 stores and annual sales of more than $10 million. In 1918 S.S Kresge was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Throughout the decades, Kresge rapidly expanded eventually opening the first Kmart store in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan. By 1966 there were more 160 Kmart stores in the US and Canada. In 1968 Kmart began airing TV commercials. In the 1970s, Kmart continued to expand

The dealers did not maintain any warehouse and hence, expected all the storing from the manufacturers. The manufacturers had to fulfill the orders by delivering the finished goods that was in the inventory and manufacture on expedited basis.

A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image,

Sears is facing a huge problem when it comes to making profits anymore and they are continuing to shut down stores. They have already shut down over 100 locations due to them not being as successful as they used to be. They also have a failed stock, drained all their resources, and they are loaded with debt. This company is not able to pull through and make profits anymore because their CEO is not capable of making changes to the company to bring it out of it. He sees that the company is not as presentable as it used to be and it does not have the same appeal. People are not going to want to go to a store where it does not have anything to offer anymore. How can sears become profitable again if they are in such debt and trouble with stocks

We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.