As the number of people playing videogames on smartphones surges, two new companies are touting a way for advertisers to reach the potential customers—without annoying them.
The start-ups, Kiip Inc. and Tap.Me Inc., are moving beyond the familiar mobile banner ads, letting marketers sponsor rewards or extra tools within the game. The idea is that users will then associate the brand with a positive experience.
When a player on a game that uses Kiip (pronounced "keep") hits a certain milestone, a message pops up saying that the person can also get a real-world reward—like a six-pack of soda free or a coupon for flowers on Mother's Day. The person can redeem the reward then or later, or email it to someone else.
"It's the moment where you feel like you've accomplished something. We match it with something that's branded," said Kiip's 20-year-old founder, Brian Wong.
Kiip uses algorithms to decide when to offer the deals, so weaker players can still get rewards and people won't be conditioned to expect prizes at certain times.
Chicago-based Tap.Me, on the other hand, lets brands sponsor in-game tools and rewards, but only if players choose them. With Tap.Me, advertisers can enter keywords and be matched to suggested tools and games they should sponsor.
For example, a restaurant chain that wants to tout its value menu might sponsor a tool that helps players get coins in the game. Once players choose that tool, the brand can send other rewards, like coupons, to the player's inbox.
Tap.Me signed its first official customer in May with Coinstar Inc.'s Redbox DVD kiosk service. Other brands, including the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., are in discussions with the start-up, which is on games with 5.7 million players now, including the popular "Charmed." It expects to reach more than 40 million players by the end of the year. The companies said they were still working out details of what the brands would offer in the games.
Founded about a year ago, Kiip began testing ads on games in April and has handled campaigns from Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc., beauty product store Sephora USA Inc. and 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., among others. The company, which is based in San Francisco, says it has more than 12 million active players on 15 games.
Kiip is still testing the response to its ads and hasn't yet disclosed the games it is using. Eventually games using the start-up's system will say "Kiip enabled" as a selling point, Mr. Wong said.
Both start-ups are in talks with game makers to get on more games and share a percentage of revenues.
The effort to capture gamers' attention comes as mobile games become a popular pastime. According to measurement firm Nielsen, 74% of people who have Apple Inc.'s iPhone played games on the phone in the past month, and 66% of those with phones running Google Inc.'s Android system had played.
Advertising has long been present in regular videogames, but mostly as "product placement" such as messages that appear on billboards in a driving game. Traditional gamers have balked at seeing any ads at all in expensive console games, but that isn't the case in cheaper mobile apps, said Noah Elkin, a principal analyst at research firm eMarketer.
Also, unlike traditional videogames, mobile games appeal to women as well as men—thus drawing interest from brands that wouldn't have ordinarily advertised in a game. "Casual games are perennially popular especially with women, and you can reach an older audience as well," said Mr. Elkin.
But mobile advertising is still a nascent field. EMarketer estimates that in the U.S., spending on mobile ads will be about $1.1 billion this year, a small number compared with the more than $150 billion expected to be spent on advertising in general.
Mr. Elkin said that the trend on mobile devices is to move beyond banner ads, in an effort to get people to engage more with the advertising. "Most advertisers are still spending the bulk of their display dollars on traditional banners, but if you look at where the steeper growth is, it's at the richer end of the media: video, interactive," he said.
The start-up founders all believe that many people either ignore banner ads or are bothered by them—particularly in games, if they hit an ad by mistake and it takes them to a new screen.
"Something that we discovered very early on was that ads needed to take advantage of the natural game design" and not interrupt the game, said Tap.Me Chief Executive Joshua Hernandez.
"Mobile advertising is growing by leaps and bounds, but the manner in which brands connect to consumers is the real key" when it comes to making mobile advertising successful, said Bob Rupczynski, global director of interactive marketing at Wrigley, which has been in discussions with Tap.Me.
The advertisers evaluating the in-game advertising technology said they hope associating themselves with pleasant parts of the game and offering rewards will provide that connection.
It's still too early to tell whether the strategy will work. Kiip says its tests show that 30% to 50% of people take advantage of the rewards. Likewise, Tap.Me says it's too early to have hard numbers on its effectiveness, although its tests show that users engage with sponsors about 15% of the time.
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304231204576403403508609600.html
Showing posts with label case study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label case study. Show all posts
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Why Can't Kmart Be Successful While Target and Walmart Thrive?
What drives some companies to succeed while others languish? Successful companies develop a system of a few truly unique capabilities that help them create differentiated value for their chosen customers.
Retailers provide many case studies in capabilities-driven success, one of the most compelling of which is the big discounter triad of Walmart, Target and Kmart. And in this fourth-quarter retail season, we thought it would be helpful to take a closer look at what really distinguishes these competitors because they provide valuable insight into the key components of a winning corporate strategy.
We believe that all successful companies — Walmart and Target included — know precisely how they provide value for customers. They make a deliberate choice about their "way to play" in the market, guided primarily by what those companies do uniquely well: their distinctive capabilities. We define capabilities not as "people capabilities," but as the interconnected people, knowledge, systems, tools and processes that create differentiated value.
They then select a set of products and services that best leverage those unique capabilities and optimally suit their chosen way to play. Most important, they avoid markets, products or services that require new or disparate capabilities, and thus threaten the company's focus.
Focus for us, therefore, is not about picking just one market, but rather about choosing one coherent way of competing. The true story about Walmart's and Target's success is that they have gone to great lengths to focus internally on building capabilities and product offerings that suit their way to play. Kmart, by contrast, has failed to develop a unique or differentiated way to play, and all that goes with it.
Let's take a closer look.
Walmart's success doesn't just stem from impressive logistics, aggressive vendor management and its position as a low-cost retailer. What really underlies Walmart's advantage is a coherent and differentiated approach to the market.
Walk through a Kmart store and you'll discover designers like Jaclyn Smith in the low-budget ambience of a warehouse. They carry Kenmore appliances, which may require high-touch sales assistance that many Sears customers expect and many Kmart stores lack. In short, Kmart has not established an identifiable way to play that reflects both customers' needs and its own capabilities. Harry Cunningham, the founder of Kmart, allegedly admitted that Sam Walton (the founder of Walmart) "not only copied our concepts, he strengthened them."
The lack of a clear concept about how to reach the market, in our view, is the single most important factor in explaining why Kmart's fortunes have fallen so far, compared to its two rivals. Without a clear way to play, and capabilities to support it, a company cannot achieve the coherence it needs to truly excel at what it does, and thus outpace competitors.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/12/why_cant_kmart_be_successful_w.html?
Retailers provide many case studies in capabilities-driven success, one of the most compelling of which is the big discounter triad of Walmart, Target and Kmart. And in this fourth-quarter retail season, we thought it would be helpful to take a closer look at what really distinguishes these competitors because they provide valuable insight into the key components of a winning corporate strategy.
We believe that all successful companies — Walmart and Target included — know precisely how they provide value for customers. They make a deliberate choice about their "way to play" in the market, guided primarily by what those companies do uniquely well: their distinctive capabilities. We define capabilities not as "people capabilities," but as the interconnected people, knowledge, systems, tools and processes that create differentiated value.
They then select a set of products and services that best leverage those unique capabilities and optimally suit their chosen way to play. Most important, they avoid markets, products or services that require new or disparate capabilities, and thus threaten the company's focus.
Focus for us, therefore, is not about picking just one market, but rather about choosing one coherent way of competing. The true story about Walmart's and Target's success is that they have gone to great lengths to focus internally on building capabilities and product offerings that suit their way to play. Kmart, by contrast, has failed to develop a unique or differentiated way to play, and all that goes with it.
Let's take a closer look.
Walmart's success doesn't just stem from impressive logistics, aggressive vendor management and its position as a low-cost retailer. What really underlies Walmart's advantage is a coherent and differentiated approach to the market.
- Their well-defined way to play focuses on "always low prices" for a wide range of consumer items, from food to prescriptions to electronics.
- They support their low-cost way to play with an integrated system of capabilities, including: real estate acquisition; no frills store design; and superior supply chain management involving among others expert point-of-sale data analytics.
- Their product and service mix is kept tightly aligned with their way to play and capabilities system: avoiding big-ticket items (e.g., furniture or large appliances) where it has no cost advantage, or where new service capabilities might be required. And it innovates constantly within its chosen constraints: e.g., tailoring product assortments to local trends.
- Target's way to play emphasizes design-forward apparel and home decor for image-conscious consumers. Everything from store layout to advertising to inventory conveys an eye for style.
- Its capabilities system supports this way to play with image advertising, "mass prestige" sourcing (with the use of private brand and exclusive offerings), pricing, and the management of urban locations.
- In product and service mix, Target is similar to Walmart in many ways, but Target satisfies the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers by stocking more furniture, clothing and exclusive designer merchandise than Walmart.
Walk through a Kmart store and you'll discover designers like Jaclyn Smith in the low-budget ambience of a warehouse. They carry Kenmore appliances, which may require high-touch sales assistance that many Sears customers expect and many Kmart stores lack. In short, Kmart has not established an identifiable way to play that reflects both customers' needs and its own capabilities. Harry Cunningham, the founder of Kmart, allegedly admitted that Sam Walton (the founder of Walmart) "not only copied our concepts, he strengthened them."
The lack of a clear concept about how to reach the market, in our view, is the single most important factor in explaining why Kmart's fortunes have fallen so far, compared to its two rivals. Without a clear way to play, and capabilities to support it, a company cannot achieve the coherence it needs to truly excel at what it does, and thus outpace competitors.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/12/why_cant_kmart_be_successful_w.html?
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Case study: A Tough Sell at Sears
This holiday season, Sears and Kmart, which merged in 2005, are pushing a single message: Buy with layaway, buy with coupons, buy now and pay later, buy with loyalty rewards points — but please, just buy.
Five years after the merger, Sears Holdings is beleaguered, with sales markedly worse than its competitors’. The company’s revenue dropped more than 10 percent from 2005 through 2009, the most recent full fiscal year. In the same time period, Wal-Mart’s sales rose almost 31 percent, Target’s more than 24 percent and Macy’s about 5 percent. Sales at J. C. Penney’s declined by about 6 percent.
Recently, too, as shoppers seem to be cautiously loading their carts again, Sears Holdings has not benefited. In the first three-quarters of this year, Sears Holdings’ sales are down about 1.9 percent compared to the same period last year, while the competition moved into positive territory.
Edward S. Lampert, the billionaire hedge fund manager who engineered the merger and is chairman of the company, has promised that Sears Holdings will be “unrecognizable” in 30 years. To drive sales, it is emphasizing online shopping, mobile apps and an Amazon.com-like marketplace with other vendors, along with heavy promotions in stores.
Still, its long-term strategy remains murky, analysts say. Sears Holdings is primarily a physical retailer, and many of its 2,200 stores in the United States are run-down and in undesirable locations. Among discount stores, Kmart lags Wal-Mart and Target. Sears is trying to edge out Lowes and Home Depot in appliances on the one hand, and Macy’s and J. C. Penney in apparel on the other.
“People assume that Eddie’s got some magic formula,” said Gary Balter, an analyst with Credit Suisse. “If you’re Sears, you’ve got a problem because you’re trying to sell a product in a dilapidated building,” he said. And Kmart stores are “about a quarter the sales productivity of Wal-Mart,” he said. “How do you compete?”
When Mr. Lampert combined Kmart and Sears in an $11.9 billion deal that went through in 2005, many of the same analysts considered it a smart move.
Mr. Lampert, who became the majority owner of Kmart after it went into bankruptcy, said then that he wanted to combine the best of both, putting brands like Kenmore and Craftsman into Kmarts, and building Sears’s presence outside of malls by turning some stand-alone Kmart stores into Sears stores. Some attractive store locations, particularly in urban areas, led analysts to believe he could sell those to competitors for premium prices.
But the sudden consumer pullback in 2008 led to lots of empty retail space, at less expensive prices than Mr. Lampert’s. Today, Mr. Balter said, Sears Holdings still has some showcase spots, in high-end, high-traffic areas like Bergen County, N.J.; South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif.; and in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, N.Y.
But much of the remaining real estate in older, decrepit malls is a problem, Mr. Balter said. “Of the 2000, there’s 1,500 that you don’t want to be in, that nobody’s going to buy,” he said. (It also has a growing division of about 1,600 specialty stores, like small hardware stores and outlets. ) The better locations “are where Sears and Kmart are making their money — if you sell those, what are you going to be left with?” Mr. Balter said.
Mr. Lampert has also not invested much in the stores themselves, analysts said. In 2009, capital spending only amounted to 0.82 percent of sales. That is about half of Macy’s spending, at 1.51 percent of sales, and a fraction of the spending at Target, Wal-Mart, J. C. Penney and even publicly traded dollar stores, all of which are at 2 percent and above.
In an interview, David Friedman, Sears Holdings’s new senior vice president and president of marketing, played down the importance of appearance.
“The customer’s experience is made up of lots of pieces,” he said. “The in-store experience is one of those that matters a lot, and we believe that the physical plant is one piece of it, but we believe the associates and the products drive the in-store experience.” Sears Holdings is experimenting with new layouts and fixtures and will introduce those more widely if they are shown to improve sales. And Tom Aiello, a Sears spokesman, said in an e-mail that brightness and cleanliness were priorities, and noted that customer-satisfaction scores had risen this year.
The stores’ products pose another challenge.
Sears has long commanded the appliance world, but Home Depot and Lowes are formidable up-and-comers. In 2009, Sears still led the group with a little more than $7.1 billion in major appliance sales, according to This Week in Consumer Electronics magazine and the Stevenson Company. But its appliance sales fell 8.2 percent that year. Lowes came in second, with $4.5 billion, up 3.8 percent, and Home Depot was in third with $3.4 billion, a 4.3 percent decline.
“That’s increased the competition for sure,” Mr. Friedman said, but he added that Sears’s employees and price-matching gave it an advantage. Sears is also now selling some exclusive brands outside its stores. Craftsman tools, for instance, are available at some Ace Hardware stores.
It is also trying to figure out apparel sales. In its high-performing stores, it has been able to sublease space to the teenage retailer Forever 21, and it is trying to lease other spaces to other brands.
New exclusive brands, like a fashion line by the Disney star Selena Gomez at Kmart, and ones by the British brands Next and French Connection, are the latest efforts to lure shoppers.
“When you have things that are more on trend,” Mr. Friedman said, “aligned with people that are more compelling, they’re more willing to take a separate trip to your store.”
But exclusives may not hold the same cachet anymore. Kmart may have signed Selena Gomez, but Target has Demi Lovato, Wal-Mart has Miley Cyrus, Kohl’s has Britney Spears and so on.
Transforming Sears or Kmart into fashion destinations will be difficult, said Jason Asaeda, a retail analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
Mr. Friedman said that customers were “more willing to purchase fashion at a Sears than at a mass merchant,” and described Kmart’s fashion efforts as having a “very good response.”
Aside from working on appliance and apparel, Sears seems to be putting the most weight behind its promotions and Internet efforts.
Through a program called AdYourWay, shoppers can choose an item online and direct the site to notify them when it reaches a certain price, or ask the site to recommend products. Mygofer lets people shop online for basics like eggs or bread along with tools or gifts, and pick up those items in a store the same day. Sears Holdings has several mobile applications to help people choose gifts or order items. Earlier this year, it formally announced Sears Marketplace, where more than 18 million products were available via third-party sellers. And a single login and profile can be used across all Sears Holdings sites, like LandsEnd.com or TheGreatIndoors.com.
Analysts said that while they were impressed with the company’s forays online, they did not see the Web sites as a cure-all. The retailer is also trying to lure shoppers with promotions. It extended its popular layaway program this year, and is also running no-interest offers on the Sears credit card and buy-now-pay-later plans with monthly payments. It began a rewards program at Kmart last year and Sears this year, offering points for buying and activities like writing reviews online. It is also offering holiday-season promotions, like offering Black Friday-level pricing on weekends beginning in October, and keeping Sears and Kmart stores open on Thanksgiving day.
For longtime shoppers like Linda Formicola, the rewards are a nice bonus, but it is Sears’s history and good discounts that bring her in.
“We’ve been shopping at Sears since I can remember,” said Ms. Formicola, 43, of Franklinville, N.J. Her husband is a mechanic, so he picks up tools there while she looks at clothes and supplies. “If stuff’s on sale, it’s pretty much the same price as you’d buy at a Wal-Mart,” she said, adding she believed the quality was better at Sears.
Bill Dreher, an analyst with Deutsche Bank, acknowledged that the company had maintained some loyalty among shoppers, but said he was puzzled about its future. While an asset mix including brands like Kenmore and Lands’ End, real estate holdings and the successful Sears Canada division may be valuable, retailing magic seems to be lacking in Mr. Lampert’s vision, he said.
“He’s got this huge conglomerate of retailing which is really not doing very well right now, and frankly, if it weren’t for Sears Canada, would be in a real mess,” Mr. Dreher said. “He’s focused so much on reducing costs and driving cash flow, and not focusing on sales and market share.”
Cheryl Thomas-Gorny, a mother of three in McRae, Ark., may not be concerned with Mr. Lampert’s market share strategy, but shoppers like her contribute to Sears’s diminishing popularity and sales. Although she said she sometimes shopped at Kmart, she criticized the quality of its goods, and said she often found the employees disagreeable.
“Honestly, I’d rather go to Target,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/22sears.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Five years after the merger, Sears Holdings is beleaguered, with sales markedly worse than its competitors’. The company’s revenue dropped more than 10 percent from 2005 through 2009, the most recent full fiscal year. In the same time period, Wal-Mart’s sales rose almost 31 percent, Target’s more than 24 percent and Macy’s about 5 percent. Sales at J. C. Penney’s declined by about 6 percent.
Recently, too, as shoppers seem to be cautiously loading their carts again, Sears Holdings has not benefited. In the first three-quarters of this year, Sears Holdings’ sales are down about 1.9 percent compared to the same period last year, while the competition moved into positive territory.
Edward S. Lampert, the billionaire hedge fund manager who engineered the merger and is chairman of the company, has promised that Sears Holdings will be “unrecognizable” in 30 years. To drive sales, it is emphasizing online shopping, mobile apps and an Amazon.com-like marketplace with other vendors, along with heavy promotions in stores.
Still, its long-term strategy remains murky, analysts say. Sears Holdings is primarily a physical retailer, and many of its 2,200 stores in the United States are run-down and in undesirable locations. Among discount stores, Kmart lags Wal-Mart and Target. Sears is trying to edge out Lowes and Home Depot in appliances on the one hand, and Macy’s and J. C. Penney in apparel on the other.
“People assume that Eddie’s got some magic formula,” said Gary Balter, an analyst with Credit Suisse. “If you’re Sears, you’ve got a problem because you’re trying to sell a product in a dilapidated building,” he said. And Kmart stores are “about a quarter the sales productivity of Wal-Mart,” he said. “How do you compete?”
When Mr. Lampert combined Kmart and Sears in an $11.9 billion deal that went through in 2005, many of the same analysts considered it a smart move.
Mr. Lampert, who became the majority owner of Kmart after it went into bankruptcy, said then that he wanted to combine the best of both, putting brands like Kenmore and Craftsman into Kmarts, and building Sears’s presence outside of malls by turning some stand-alone Kmart stores into Sears stores. Some attractive store locations, particularly in urban areas, led analysts to believe he could sell those to competitors for premium prices.
But the sudden consumer pullback in 2008 led to lots of empty retail space, at less expensive prices than Mr. Lampert’s. Today, Mr. Balter said, Sears Holdings still has some showcase spots, in high-end, high-traffic areas like Bergen County, N.J.; South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif.; and in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, N.Y.
But much of the remaining real estate in older, decrepit malls is a problem, Mr. Balter said. “Of the 2000, there’s 1,500 that you don’t want to be in, that nobody’s going to buy,” he said. (It also has a growing division of about 1,600 specialty stores, like small hardware stores and outlets. ) The better locations “are where Sears and Kmart are making their money — if you sell those, what are you going to be left with?” Mr. Balter said.
Mr. Lampert has also not invested much in the stores themselves, analysts said. In 2009, capital spending only amounted to 0.82 percent of sales. That is about half of Macy’s spending, at 1.51 percent of sales, and a fraction of the spending at Target, Wal-Mart, J. C. Penney and even publicly traded dollar stores, all of which are at 2 percent and above.
In an interview, David Friedman, Sears Holdings’s new senior vice president and president of marketing, played down the importance of appearance.
“The customer’s experience is made up of lots of pieces,” he said. “The in-store experience is one of those that matters a lot, and we believe that the physical plant is one piece of it, but we believe the associates and the products drive the in-store experience.” Sears Holdings is experimenting with new layouts and fixtures and will introduce those more widely if they are shown to improve sales. And Tom Aiello, a Sears spokesman, said in an e-mail that brightness and cleanliness were priorities, and noted that customer-satisfaction scores had risen this year.
The stores’ products pose another challenge.
Sears has long commanded the appliance world, but Home Depot and Lowes are formidable up-and-comers. In 2009, Sears still led the group with a little more than $7.1 billion in major appliance sales, according to This Week in Consumer Electronics magazine and the Stevenson Company. But its appliance sales fell 8.2 percent that year. Lowes came in second, with $4.5 billion, up 3.8 percent, and Home Depot was in third with $3.4 billion, a 4.3 percent decline.
“That’s increased the competition for sure,” Mr. Friedman said, but he added that Sears’s employees and price-matching gave it an advantage. Sears is also now selling some exclusive brands outside its stores. Craftsman tools, for instance, are available at some Ace Hardware stores.
It is also trying to figure out apparel sales. In its high-performing stores, it has been able to sublease space to the teenage retailer Forever 21, and it is trying to lease other spaces to other brands.
New exclusive brands, like a fashion line by the Disney star Selena Gomez at Kmart, and ones by the British brands Next and French Connection, are the latest efforts to lure shoppers.
“When you have things that are more on trend,” Mr. Friedman said, “aligned with people that are more compelling, they’re more willing to take a separate trip to your store.”
But exclusives may not hold the same cachet anymore. Kmart may have signed Selena Gomez, but Target has Demi Lovato, Wal-Mart has Miley Cyrus, Kohl’s has Britney Spears and so on.
Transforming Sears or Kmart into fashion destinations will be difficult, said Jason Asaeda, a retail analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
Mr. Friedman said that customers were “more willing to purchase fashion at a Sears than at a mass merchant,” and described Kmart’s fashion efforts as having a “very good response.”
Aside from working on appliance and apparel, Sears seems to be putting the most weight behind its promotions and Internet efforts.
Through a program called AdYourWay, shoppers can choose an item online and direct the site to notify them when it reaches a certain price, or ask the site to recommend products. Mygofer lets people shop online for basics like eggs or bread along with tools or gifts, and pick up those items in a store the same day. Sears Holdings has several mobile applications to help people choose gifts or order items. Earlier this year, it formally announced Sears Marketplace, where more than 18 million products were available via third-party sellers. And a single login and profile can be used across all Sears Holdings sites, like LandsEnd.com or TheGreatIndoors.com.
Analysts said that while they were impressed with the company’s forays online, they did not see the Web sites as a cure-all. The retailer is also trying to lure shoppers with promotions. It extended its popular layaway program this year, and is also running no-interest offers on the Sears credit card and buy-now-pay-later plans with monthly payments. It began a rewards program at Kmart last year and Sears this year, offering points for buying and activities like writing reviews online. It is also offering holiday-season promotions, like offering Black Friday-level pricing on weekends beginning in October, and keeping Sears and Kmart stores open on Thanksgiving day.
For longtime shoppers like Linda Formicola, the rewards are a nice bonus, but it is Sears’s history and good discounts that bring her in.
“We’ve been shopping at Sears since I can remember,” said Ms. Formicola, 43, of Franklinville, N.J. Her husband is a mechanic, so he picks up tools there while she looks at clothes and supplies. “If stuff’s on sale, it’s pretty much the same price as you’d buy at a Wal-Mart,” she said, adding she believed the quality was better at Sears.
Bill Dreher, an analyst with Deutsche Bank, acknowledged that the company had maintained some loyalty among shoppers, but said he was puzzled about its future. While an asset mix including brands like Kenmore and Lands’ End, real estate holdings and the successful Sears Canada division may be valuable, retailing magic seems to be lacking in Mr. Lampert’s vision, he said.
“He’s got this huge conglomerate of retailing which is really not doing very well right now, and frankly, if it weren’t for Sears Canada, would be in a real mess,” Mr. Dreher said. “He’s focused so much on reducing costs and driving cash flow, and not focusing on sales and market share.”
Cheryl Thomas-Gorny, a mother of three in McRae, Ark., may not be concerned with Mr. Lampert’s market share strategy, but shoppers like her contribute to Sears’s diminishing popularity and sales. Although she said she sometimes shopped at Kmart, she criticized the quality of its goods, and said she often found the employees disagreeable.
“Honestly, I’d rather go to Target,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/22sears.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
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