Sears has created a “Financial Crisis” when hedge fund manager Edward Lampert took over control of the company. The mentality of investors of a CFO is an important viewpoint during crisis because it can help streamline process and reduce cost. Retail experience should be dominant the retail in order to feel the pulse of the consumer desires and to determine proper margin levels while eliminating inefficiencies in the organization. According to Marina Strauss of the Globe and Mail, “a sweeping change will be required to improve the retailer’s outlook”. She quoted the (CEO of Sears-Canada) Mr. McDonald saying in a memo that “Our store are too difficult to shop in. We have inconsistent execution…We do not offer the right product in the right market” (STRAUSS M., 2011). Executive Summary Sears Holding Corporation is the fourth largest retailer in the United States and Canada. Their supplements include Sears, Roebuck and Co. as well as K-Mart. “The closing of the merger between Sears and K-Mart took place on March 24, 2005. Sears has more than 4,000 retail stores across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Sears offers products and services through over 2,700 branded and affiliated stores. Sears operates 894 broad-line stores and 1,354 specialty stores. Sears’ broad-line stores are mall-based locations. The specialty stores include Sears Hometown Stores that are mostly independently owned, Sears Home Appliance Showrooms, Sears Hardware Stores, Sears Auto Centers, and The Great Indoor Stores (Sears Holdings, 2011).” “Sears is the leading retailer in home appliance, tools, lawn and garden, electronics, and automotive repair and maintenance. They are also the largest home service provider and answers over 11 million service c... ... middle of paper ... ...insey & Company, provided leadership for Sears in using Carnegie model concepts and techniques, and creating and capitalizing on synergies among merchandising, insurance, real estate, and financial services (David, F., 1989). The ability of a company to maintain a good reputation is directly linked to the company’s ability to retain its stakeholders (Peterson, 2005). During a negative event or crisis situation, a company needs to ensure that it has effective strategies and resources in place, to deal with it responsibly, efficiently to minimize losses in share price value and public perceptions of corporate reputation (Coldwell .D, Joosub .T, & Papageorgiou .E, 2012). It is always advantageous to analyze past crises in order to develop a conceptual understanding of crisis situations and appropriateness of various means of coping with them (STERN, E. K., pg.1, 2009).
Nearly four decades past its peak, Sears strives to maintain steady profits against its competitors (Howard 2017; Meyer 2017).
Sears as an organization is in its defining stages; given that the current market has saturated what the retail department store once was. Sears is the example of a company that is in need of stronger leadership and a clear direction and strategic intent. However, Sears does have aspects of a company that has formal procedures and specialties; its lack of focus on its identity and value promise to the customer; has allowed them to
With Kroger being a retailer and manufacturer, its annual sales are an astonishing 96 billion dollars, allowing the Kroger Company to rank as one of America’s top manufacturers and one of the world’s top retailers. Of course, there were opportunities that were taken advantage of, leading to their high position in retailing and manufacturing. In particular, considered one of the biggest mergers in Kroger’s history, Kroger partnered with Fred Meyer Incorporated in a 13 billion dollar deal, creating supermarket chains with the largest geographical coverage any business has ever seen. Because of this merger, Kroger has since obtained huge economies in purchasing, manufacturing, and information systems and logistics, making Kroger an outstanding retailer and manufacturing company.
Wal-Mart is an American national wholesale business that runs chains of huge discount branch stores and warehouses. The business is the world's second largest company, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2013, the biggest private employer in the world with over two million employees, and is the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart is a family-owned company, and is controlled by the Walton family, who possess 50 percent of Wal-Mart. It’s also the largest grocery seller in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51 percent of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business. It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America. Wal-Mart helps people around the world save money in retail stores, online and through their mobile devices. More than 245 million customers and members visit their 11,000 stores each week under 69 banners in 27 countries and e-commerce websites in 10 countries. With 2013 sales of $466 billion, Wal-Mart employs 2.2 million workers worldwide.
Change is an inevitable aspect when conducting business; crisis and respective unforeseen events too are an intrinsic facet and learning opportunity for organizational progress (Heath, 2001). During times of crisis public relations is an imperative supportive component to overall managerial activity involving a four-step process inclusive of analysis, strategic planning, implementation and evaluation (Ledingham and Bruning, 2000) in application of a broader practice beyond the immediate crisis with forethought to the future of the organization as a whole. To be an effective crisis management tactic, such a communications approach must be inter-departmental, to support the executive initiatives to define the reputational image and re-establish long-term relationships with key publics (Atkins, Bates, and Drennan, 2006). It is crucial to serve the best-interest and welfare of all involved stakeholders (Valackiene, 2010) and function as a strategic management tool in effort to uphold foundational organizational activities (Grunig and Grunig, 1998), whilst identifying factors including social, political, economic variance. Public relations theorist Grunig further identifies the important role of public relations as a (crisis) managerial function to provide grand merit to key publics, fueled with ethical and social responsibility in the best interest of said publics (2006). When defining appropriate courses of action in the presentation of key messages, “apologia” a rhetorical technique is frequently employed to cope in crises situations (Smith, 2009), utilized repair image or defend oneself; and in the delivery of such messaging it is imperative to exude morality and trustworthiness (Khors Schultz, and Huxman, 2003). Cutlip, Center ...
The purpose of this presentation is to provide a comparative analysis of business activities of two well-known representatives of the US retail industry, Target and Walmart. My research is focused on a business strategy of these largest and most experienced American merchandising companies; particularly, on their activities in Canada. Based on the data collected from the various sources, I would like to detect, analyze, and demonstrate the obvious causes that have lead to a catastrophic failure of Target in its unsuccessful attempt to win a Canadian market.
JCPenney is a chain of American mid-range department stores that is based out of Texas that started over 100 years ago. JCPenny has been successful for most of its time up until the last three to four years. The company is trying relentlessly to overcome the lingering effects of the makeover that former CEO, Ron Johnson, had implemented in order for the company to take a new direction in hopes of increasing sales. The new CEO, Myron Ullman, has taken a close look into the markets demographic segmentation along with the income segmentation in order to attempt to return the retailer back to its old self, which is to appeal to middle-market customers. A couple issues of major concern for the company are the dissolving of Johnson’s Boutiques, the price of their products, and overall revenue.
The ability of such organization to successfully craft strategies to manage such crisis is what differentiate an organization that is able to manage instability state of affairs from another organization that allows such horrible state to dampen its strategic objectives (SakaRahmonOlawale, 2014) it has been observed that organizations lack the relevant human resource at one hand and on the other hand the required indicators or organizational skills to maintain the organizational power. A critical situation like crisis management can be resolved from an open system perspective of organization. The researcher attempted to investigate the open options available to address the question of crisis management at large. Crisis to any organization occurs when the competent authority wilfully knowing the paucity of decisions take into effect and place stakeholders on the verge of risk. As, Lebringer, specified three key misdeeds: Crisis of Skewed management within the organization, deception crisis, crisis of management and misconduct. When, managers wilfully favours short-term economic gain and usually neglect the broader social values, stakeholders other than on the importance of stock holders, Oni Led Cadbury Boardroom crisis are a clear instance of how these indicators can damage the flow of organizational development. Partially, it is more important for the managers to understand the crisis signals as they mark the liquidity of new happenings which handicap the total progress at large. Signal detection, Preparation and prevention, Containment and damage control, Business recovery along with learning are some of the key attributes which usually lacks where crisis has already obliterated the genuine
Coombs (2007); Ulmer, Sellnow, & Seeger (2011) Šontaitė-Petkevičienė (2014) share a common agreement that crisis is a sudden, unexpected and uncertain event, and a threat and harm to stakeholders or public saftety, financial losses, and reputation damage. The cause of a crisis is oftentimes because of unethical actions are often the cause of a crisis and the organization’s ethical values was revealed when there is a crisis occurred (Ulmer, Sellnow, & Seeger, 2011). Crisis communication aims to address a crisis situation by collecting, processing and disseminating information (Coombs & Holladay, 2010). Conversely, (Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1999) argue that crisis communication is basically a part of public relations (PR) and it is a requirement for organizations to repair damaged images after a crisis or disaster (as cited in Seeger,
Should Kmart and Sears keep their own identities and have unique competitive strategies, or should they be combined in some way with a new overall corporate competitive strategy? Please defend your answer.
Sears Holdings Corporation is an American holding headquartered in Hoffman Estates, IL. is the parental company of retail brands, Sears and Kmart. It was formed after the merging of Kmart Holdings Corporation and Sears, Roebuck and Co. Besides the Sears and Kmart, the Sears Holdings also own the brands Craftman, Kenmore and DieHard. It has 3,472 retail locations under the operating of Sears, Kmart, and other subsidiaries. The businesses of Sears Holdings cover retail, home services, auto centers, pharmacies etc. Their business reached 49 states in the U.S. Moreover, they also have businesses in Canada. At the same time, Sears Holdings also owns a huge number of real estate(Sears Holdings Company, 2016).
The Strategic Analysis will show some of the steps that have been taken to overcome some of the difficulties that Sears has had. The newest CEO, Arthur C. Martinez, has been a motivating leader for the company. He has implemented many changes that have increased sales and moved Sears back up to the top of the retail chain. These changes would include store remodeling, Internet strategies, differentiation, and human resource management.
Sears Holdings is a struggling discount retailer and is detaching from other stores in order to boost its financial position. Almost a dozen Sears and Kmart stores have been sold over the past year and...
Companies have to distinguish themselves in different ways if they are to have a good reputation and this can be done through their communication strategies. In a time of crisis the company’s reputation is threatened and the communication strategies used will save or hurt the firm’s reputation. Before creating communication strategies, companies ought to identify their stakeholders. Appendix 3 illustrates the different stakeholders of a company.
During fiscal 1997, Sears drew much of its operation (55% of its total sales) in selling credit cards through its own brand, creating a financial business that accounted for 48% of its operating revenues in the same year .