Eva Liu's Blog

Sears and Hudson’s Bay have once been the two major competitors in Canadian department store retail. However, in recent years the Canadian retailer has found growth and expansion while the American retailer is slowly backing out of Canada with major layoffs and closures. The reasons to why become quite evident when you compare the existing Sears stores with Hudson’s Bay stores. Hudson’s Bay improved their services over time and adjusted to the changes in consumer trends while accounting for different customer segments. In addition to their constant renovation of their stores, by bringing in popular, higher-end brands like Polo Ralph Lauren, Alaia, Jason Wu, and Proenza Schouler, to appeal to higher class consumers, collaborating with popular retailer, Topshop, to appeal to younger, trendy customers, and at the same time keeping their affordable in-house brands as well, they extended their customer segments to reach basically everyone. Sears stores on the other hand, has undergone minimal change and expansion in both company brand and products, sticking with the same lower-quality and affordable products, which target a very specific customer segment. Not to mention most of their stores still look the same as they did ten years ago. This alone gives consumers little incentive to shop there given the atmosphere and lack of selection, since competitors like Hudson’s Bay and Target can probably offer better and more varied things with minimal price difference. Even successful businesses, like Sears, need to constantly undergo changes in accordance with the ever-changing consumer tastes in order to become successful even as time passes by.

References:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/new-look-hudsons-bay-pushes-retail-growth-plan/article10836382/

http://www2.thebay.com/theroom/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/29/sears-canada-layoffs-job-cuts_n_4690554.html