Thank you. I was afraid to post the photos. I have lost about 175 pounds and need skin removed. Laurel talked me into posting. I was not an over eater. but I could not walk when I got out of the Army.I had gained the weight thru steroids for an injury, and birth control! I could not eat while on birth control but I drank diet soda by the CASE. I said CASES. now I am down to one soda a week. and coffee each day, in December no coffee before surgery. I didn't mean to go on and on. I cannot believe I went from 28 to 20 but NOW I am a size 16 and it is all about KMART!!! lots of 16s a few 18s. just last month there are pics of me with store managers wearing a size larger.
What helped me, you wonder?
Not the gym, not Jenny Craig, it is KMart where I found my confidence, MyKMart Community, the camera Molly sent me. The notes from people like you, and you know about the shoes right? KMart shoes I take only 1-2 falls per day. I was in leg braces as an adult. but I can take a walk every day in KMart shoes, and I don't fall enough to be scared.
I really want to do a KMart commercial about shoes. We should show what leg braces look like, and show me in the shoes with the before and after photos. I would do it for a pair of those new Nautilus boots. not for money. I would do it so people can se what KMart has done for me.

Technology alone is not a strategy, making choices that create a defensible position in the marketplace is a strategy. Sears needs to not only benchmark/mimic the success of competitors, but also take a survey of its capabilities/resources and apply them in a unique way. Right now they seem to be waiting for the next fire and offering a knee-jerk response. Even if they get the emergency response process down perfectly, they are only increasing operational efficiency, not following a real strategy. For instance, subbing out customer service (rebates, returns, repairs) is crazy if you do not have a way to monitor related issues and quickly offer a unified, cohesive and workable response, especially when I can reach 50,000+ people each night via blogs and tweets to spread the word that the service stinks and no one is working on a viable solution. The consumer is rising to greater power in the relationship due to the ready availability of information concerning costs and substitutes, and any firm that can't accept that fact and respond in kind will lose market share on a daily basis. If I was at Sears and saw how slow internal processes change there, I would definitely consider taking any attractive offer that came along; why waste my knowledge and talent on a old school business model that refuses to change/adapt? Sears seems to rest on ots laurels as its market share slowly disappears. Thank God I bought $3,000 of appliances (oven, dishwasher and dryer) from a competitor in the last 30 days; I feel good about the interactions, the prices and the warranties I purchased. What can Sears dd to get me back in the store? At this point it will take a lot.

I appreciate your concern. However, I am not just interested in a particular rebate, but also about whether we should stay loyal customers to a company that fails to rethink its service delivery models as part of an overall customer relationship management strategy. How many people have just given up when faced with the obtuse processes in place to get what they paid for when dealing with the many faces of Sears, including rebates, warranties, advice, repairs, etc.? The fact that we are able to discuss this issue is directly related to the effort on the part of Sears to create an intimate relationship with each customer, but if the underlying antiquated business model/process does not change, then the company's profits will continue to slide. So what's the point? An ongoing dialogue that fails to result in actual improvements in performance/service is even more frustrating than a deaf ear because the response is seen as a pretense, a facade. Upper management needs to find a way to take into account the validity of repetitive complaints and use the information to implement true organizational/operational change. Yes, even Sears needs to become a learning organization to survive.

Last edited on Nov 20, 2009 at 9:57AM