Sears (SHLD) has begun to hire some heavy hitters to run its online operations. Since the company does not do a very good job of selling merchandise in its stores, perhaps it will have more luck on the internet.
The huge retailer will bring in James Barr from Microsoft (MSFT) where he has run MSN Shopping and Marketplaces according to The Wall Street Journal. Sears will also bring in a new CTO who has worked in Wal-Mart’s (WMT) operations.
Sears will find that the battle to sell retail products on the internet is so competitive that it may not be able to improve its fortunes there. Among the top 50 sites in the US according to comScore, Sears sites ranked 21st in December with 27.2 million unique visitors. Wal-Mart was in 12th place with 44.3 million uniques. Target (TGT), Best Buy (BBY), Circuit City (CC), and JC Penney (JCP) were all in the top 50. That does not take into account companies like Amazon (AMZN) which sell items that compete with Sears but have no bricks-and-mortar stores.
A look at numbers from audience measurement firm Compete shows that traffic to the Sears and K-Mart sites lag far behind traffic to Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
No matter what else Sears does online, it will have to compete on price. Online buyers are sophisticated enough to do comparison shopping. Lower prices online established to bring in shoppers means lower margins for Sears.
The Sears and K-Mart brands are dying quickly. They are not going to be resurrected online,
Douglas A. McIntyre
ng
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