I was in my marketing university class today, one of those cramdown summer courses where you get a full semester's worth of credit in just five weeks, and today's subject was loss of brand equity. Our prof asked us how many of us had heard of the DieHard brand. Among around 80 students, I raised my hand of course, as did a lot of the non-traditonal older students. Everyone else under 25? Besides me, not a single person raised their hand. Whatever Sears is doing, it's doing it wrong. He did a lot of talking about how Mr. Lampert was a terrible CEO who didn't understand marketing and destroyed Sears' brand. It struck me how he's already being used in university courses as a case study as an illustrative example of how not to run a company.
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Most under-25s don’t own cars, and Die Hard is a brand for car owners who value durability, quality and reliability.
Get back to me when the kiddies are all grown up and adulting. Die Hard will be central in their lives.
Diehard also branched out too much to be sellable. From batteries to charging equipment, floor mats, wiper blades then tires. No other retailer would want all that bloat. Also, they cut back on the quality in the batteries which lost them the older generations that would tell the youngers to go buy them because trust in a batttery is important. So, yeah, f'd a brand for a quick buck
@1qku the product is made by Johnson Controls (at least in the past if they didn't stop selling to sears). They are one of the largest auto battery manufacturers and make batteries for many companies - including Wallyworld, where you can get an equivalent battery for much less. Diehard is like Kenmore - just a name slapped on someone else's product. It only had value as it had a company that stood behind the name. Now they are just overpriced names with no backing or future.
Sears and Kmart are dead
who really cares
The product itself is really good. Hopes some one buys it off them and markets it how it deserves.
Sears used the same thinking’s as Hitler did with the battle of Stalingrad. “ where a German solder sets foot, there is where he stays! “. Concept of moving off malls was totally alien to them. Why Lamchops was slowly milking the cow until it was dry
Sears was the megalithic Walmart comparison for a long time. They did not follow up with the technologies at the time and felt too comfortable staying where they were. If they had, they may have salvaged themselves.