News

Sears CEO highlights 'integrated retail' strategy

May 31, 2013

Sears' Chief Executive Eddie Lampert announced his plan to give the 120-year-old retail brand a facelift — and hopefully turn around its six-year sales slump.

According to an article on businessweek.com, the company's new mantra is "integrated retail," a term that refers to its focus on stitching together sales from online, mobile and brick-and-mortar stores. Lampert said the company is shrinking shipping times, inviting customers to pick up merchandise in-store and enabling in-store shoppers to have items shipped to their homes, the article reported.

The article also discussed Sears' gradual transition to its online strategy:

Some Web visitors are more valuable than others, and this is where the Sears strategy might pay off even if its online traffic trails key rivals. Shop Your Way, the member-loyalty program launched three years ago, is being deployed in lockstep with Sears's e-commerce efforts. The program already has tens of millions of users and accounts for more than 60 percent of revenue at U.S. Sears and Kmart locations.

As the company logs more data about each of its members and casually nudges them to buy online, Sears can put in play a massive price differentiation experiment. The high-income shopper who bought a top-of-the-line dishwasher may see fewer sale items online, while the person who visited the site for three months before pulling the trigger on a marked-down weed trimmer can be prodded with discounts.

Read more about multichannel retailing.