I was looking at laptop computers on the Sears website and I felt like I was shopping on Ebay. Each item listed was being sold by various distributors via the Sears website. Does Sears just represent goods from various distributors and not stock their own merchandise? I saw no incentive to buy in this fashion from.....not really seemingly Sears. I saw this kind of arrangement on Walmart.com too....
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Sears does not hold inventory on most large ticket items like appliance, fitness, and mattress. They rely on Marketplace vendors for fulfillment. This is the same model used by other online retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair, and Overstock
They're all taking a page out of Amazon's playbook where their "marketplace" allows 3rd party sellers to sell items along with 1st and 2nd party sellers. This way, they can let the seller do all the work, and charge them a fee for using their site. Real reason is why anyone wants to use them as a marketplace to sell on, it's going to be insanely slow moving!
That's right, Sears always has the latest in computer hardware! It's the first place you think of when you need to get your Coleco Adams and Commodore 64s!
Fake.. what’s the first retailer that comes to mind when shopping for a new computer? Of course it’s Sears....
at this point there are probably blogs that drive more traffic to ebay than sears.com
At this point in the game, what real incentive is there for customers to shop at Sears.com versus Amazon, Ebay, Walmart or any other competitor?
Well that's an awful plan to return to profitability
If anything the future of the company is just a website with a marketplace until even the marketplace vendors don't get paid.
Sears is just part of the eBay partner network. It gets commission fees for anyone who makes a purchase, same as a blogger.
They are still not ordering more inventory? Or rather, no one will ship more inventory to them?
Sears barely has stock anymore. It is known.
Seems they are ramping up their marketplace portion more than ever.