[quote name='preston181']Kmart and Sears have done themselves in. They showed a glimmer of savvy last year with their gaming deals, but it seems that was a fluke, or some sort of experiment that the idiots who run the place just didn't want to give a go to for another year.
They run the place like it's the late 80's or early 90's: pastel decor, floors that seem to not have been replaced/cleaned for 20 years, the fact that they still carry VHS and audio cassette tapes, (seriously, some locations still do), and their full-time workers/customer base seems to have been middle-aged back in 1990, and are now just old as sin.
Kmart is stuck in a time warp, and Sears seems to be content with a dwindling supply of no-longer-made-in-American Craftsman crap and overpriced apparel.
They had the chance to turn things around. They'll still cling on in some places, at least until the old farts that frequent their stores throughout the week die off.[/QUOTE]
Most Sears locations here are really nice stores, they are clean and well lit, and are the complete opposite of Kmart. However most still have Christmas stuff out, which in turn tells me basically no one has shopped there this Xmas. They are packed with merchandise that no one is buying. Its clearly not a destination store anymore, its a store where you go when you can't find what you want at Walmart.
I don't know how Kmart survives with their high prices, other stores are revamping, expanding and stocking merchandise that customers actually want to buy, while Kmart still has merchandise from decades ago in some cases. They are double the cost of Walmart on everyday items in some cases, and in most cases they are at least 30-40% higher than Walmart on everyday items. The stores are dimly lit and dirty, and they are not well stocked. Merchandise is everywhere and there seems to be no organization to it. Expired food lines the shelves. The local asian market does a better job with keeping fresh food on the shelves than kmart does....
Kmart/Sears are also the only stores where I have seen games stolen right from the package, so I can definitely see why they lock them up, now I won't buy a game at Kmart or Sears unless it is fully shrinkwrapped and sealed, and I check to see if the disk is there, if it has even one tiny piece of wrap missing I will not buy it because there is no way Kmart/Sears is gonna give me a refund on a game because the disk is not there.