Conclusion

Conclusion
After our interviews, visiting a Sears store and doing some research on the Internet we can now come to a conclusion if Sears is a concept that could work in the Netherlands.

With people wanting everything faster these days it’s easy if everything you need is under one roof and you don’t have to drive or walk from one place to another to get all the stuff you want. Though this sounds great in theory you need to be cautions of the fact a store this big can turn a bit confusing if it’s not clearly marked where everything is, as a customer recently complained.

Sears carries a lot of major brands, this gives customers the feeling that there buying high quality products which is good because they then will come back faster to buy other products they need.

There really aren’t any stores in the Netherlands that are alike to Sears, a store that sells that many different kinds of products. All the stores are specialized in one market. Companies like IKEA which is specialized in furniture and Praxis which is specialized in hardware. So without any real competitors on the market Sears could work in the Netherlands but they will have to perfect everything they do because it’s hard to enter the market as a new company and in the Netherlands we’ve only heard of Sears through television but we don’t really know what it is. A lot of stories we read said that the customer services and deliverance are poorly, this will have to improve if you want to be successful in a country where nobody knows you because customers will go back to the store they are used to. In the USA Sears is an established brand so a lot of people are used to Sears and won’t switch that fast.

Another problem for a Sears store in the Netherlands would be the location because Sears sells so many products. People in the Netherlands go to a mall or IKEA, Praxis etc. with an idea of what they’re going to buy. When you go to the mall you want to buy clothes and not a new dishwasher so the clothes department of Sears would do well there, but the rest wouldn’t. If you build a Sears store near IKEA, Praxis etc. the departments with tools and appliances would sell well but the departments with clothes and electronics wouldn’t do so good just because Dutch people aren’t looking for those products in that location. In the USA it’s much more combined because of the big department stores like Sears, Wall Mart and Marshalls.

If Sears changes their way they approach their potential customers in the Netherlands they could certainly succeed.