There have been three major strategic mistakes hat Sears has made throughout the past decade. In 1981, Sears made their first strategic mistake, which was the “diversification outside its “core” retailing business into financial and real estate services, by purchasing the Dean Witter Reynolds securities firm and the Caldwell Banker real estate operation”. This was a big mistake, because this new business lines had little synergies with the company’s core business.
In 2006, Sears’s made their second strategic mistake, which was a strategy to reorganize its operation in several departments that often run by personnel with little retailing knowledge. It should come as no surprise that this policy was doomed to fail, as evidenced by the compass financial results in recent years”. At this time Sears’s strategy is to sell off companies’ stores. The problem with this strategy could be that it is a sale of wrong assets at the wrong time. In brief, Sears has adopted the wrong strategies over and over again; still it is able to stay in the top 5 retail stores.
Marketing is a key factor that improves sales, and the action of promoting and selling products or services. It is clear that all retail companies’ objectives would be increasing heir sells, expanding their retail stores, and be considered the best retail store for other brands. Moreover, countries’ economies cycles and right now, and after almost several years the economy may double its’ digits growth of the U. S. Economy, as well as the European Union and some Asian countries, are in standby, but there are those economies, like for instance, China, India, Brazil or United Arab Emirates that are growing and getting stronger. . Explain one (1) strategy that the company might use to take advantage of an external opportunity, and one (1) strategy that the company might use to address a potential threat. A good strategy that Sears could take would be getting into these emerging economies. This will not only increase Sears’ sells, but also all of those American brands, such as Craftsman, Diehard batteries and Keener will increase their sells by exporting their products to other countries. A good strategy the company might use is to address a potential threat, and this is again professional marketing.
Sears should think in using this event as a theme for their marketing campaign of selling or expanding to the new markets. In addition, between the two biggest retail of tools hardware and housing items, Home Depot is the one winning in the market, why? Because Home Depot has two to three stores in each county, city. Lowest only has maybe one in each county, city or commonwealth and Sears 1 or none in each city. For instance, in Washington D. C. Metropolitan area, there are 30 Home Depots in a radius of 50 miles, 25 Lowest and only 10 Sears stores.
Moreover, it is not necessary to have an innovative strategy in these unsure economic moments to increase sells, but maybe, not forgetting what made Sears ‘Sears” is the best strategy and brought to the high point. Table 1 shows a competitive profile matrix between Sears Wall-Mart and Target, three very similar retail stores. In order to get the score, you need to multiply the weight by the rating, if the difference between a firms’ overall rating and the scores of lower-rated rivals is higher, then the firm has greater net competitive advantage (Maxi-Podia. Mom 2012). The overall competitiveness of a firm can be evaluated on the basis of its overall strength rating. On the other hand, if the difference between a firms’ overall rating and the scores of higher-rated rivals is bigger, then the firm has greater net nominative disadvantage. Wall-Mart is the store with the highest score of 3. 50, meaning that it is the market leader and it dominates its competitors.
