Case Study – What Happened to Kmart?

Well, if one believes what some are saying on Facebook, then yes. However, the Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based retailer only announced it planned to close 18 underperforming stores this year when it released its first quarter earnings Thursday. “The specific locations will be announced by the end of March.”

Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?

Is Wal-mart the ideal store to shop it? Austrian economic and business professional Karen De Coster and banker Brad Edmonds believe that Wal-mart improves the lives of people in rural areas because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they would not have if Wal-mart did not exist.

The industry we have chosen is the department store-retail industry. Within this industry, we have chosen the department stores of JCPenney and Macy’s. We find this industry, as well as these two companies, interesting from a strategic perspective. JCPenney has recently undergone a massive strategic restructuring in regards to its pricing, brand offerings, and store layout, pushing it away from the typical department store strategy of discounts and coupons. Its new strategy has become much closer to Wal-Mart’s strategy of every day low prices. Macy’s, on the other hand, has restructured with a push from the economic

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.

First, obtaining information from Linda James was crucial to the success of the retail business; however, it would have been beneficial to also interview lower level executives who are closer to the front line of the retail business. This change in information gathering may have generated more useful data. Likewise, the facts and statistics that were collected were a wealth of information, but could have included supplementary perspectives. Brainstorming or Group Think techniques, for example, could have been used with both the junior and senior employees to make them feel more involved and to let them know that they have a voice within the organization. Working together, they may have been able to come up with other ideas that would help inspire the staff using lower cost motivation methods. Finally, the Urgency-Criticality Matrix was useful for setting priority, but utilizing Decision Tree methods could have also been valuable in this circumstance. Decision trees would have helped to assess the financial impact more completely by creating a tree of possible options and assigning an estimated value, cost or savings to each choice.

The one thing that Kmart did do was invest in redundancy. Unfortunately, their supply chain has always been behind the times, as its regular out-of-stock notices on hot items indicate, while causing an overflow of less popular products. The lack of real-time data access resulted in higher inventory carrying costs, poor buying decisions, and increased markdowns when products did not sell as anticipated. Financially, it has resulted in lower sales and lower profit margins per square foot. Kmart earns $245 whereas Target earns $275 and Wal-Mart $440. Kmart’s gross margins are 2.0 to 3.0 percent whereas Target’s are 5.5 to 7.0 percent and Wal-Mart’s are 5.5 to 6.5 percent (Atlas Partners & Watertown Capital, 2002).

Currently Kmart has been constantly losing to competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target. Target is seen as a higher class store compared to the other two, and Wal-Mart is seen as a good store with good prices. Kmart has had trouble finding it’s own identity. They try to market themselves as being a better bargain than Wal-Mart, but the store is viewed as being “cheap” from the customer’s point of view. Kmart tried to fix that, by bringing in the Martha Stewart line. They

Best Buy, a familiar retailer in the technology world, is struggling to stay on top. Online and mass stores have cornered the market in terms of convenience, customer service and price matching. The recent closing of over two hundred stores alongside falling sales has experts predicting that the giant won’t be in business long. Using a results-only work environment (ROWE), Best Buy has removed the customer from the equation and forced many employees out. A marketing disaster, Best Buy must change its marketing strategy from sales-based to a customer-based to stay afloat.

the superior tracking capability of RFID chips would reduce shrinkage and other forms of loss by up

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

There are so many organizational behavior concepts to take into consideration for the success or failure of any organization, business or company. The way these concepts are handled by management and employees will either keep the business open or these same concepts could end up in closure of this same business or organization. Management and employees are the people who will make the "win or lose" situation occur. Communication, motivation, and power and politics are some of the concepts that will cause a business to succeed or fail. Businesses must be competitive to stay alive, or these same businesses will

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,

Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are

This paper will discuss the kroger company’s strategy and competitive advantage. It will also discuss competition and strategy from rival company Walmart. Research will show whether Kroger uses an offensive or defensive strategic approach to business practices. It will discuss mergers and acquisitions of The Kroger Company (Bethel University, 2017).