ShopYourWay Reconnects Sears Electronic Commerce

Sears Holding has comprehensively reorganized its electronic commerce functions, including its websites and Sears2go mobile phone platform, under an initiative dubbed ShopYourWay developed to help consumers understand and use the expanding array of goods and services the retailer provides in store, online, even through PDAs.

And, in fact, those goods and services will be expanding even more over the next few weeks with Sears Holding launching new services and shopping capabilities. Currently available on Sears.com, ShopYourWay will launch as a comprehensive element on Kmart.com eventually, although the functions are being introduced.

The main goals of the reorganization, Sears Holding spokesman Tom Aiello said, are twofold. First is to integrate online and mobile phone shopping options with new elements that the company has been adding to its electronic commerce operation, such as its personal shopper function and store to web kiosks. From Sears.com, consumers who click on ShopYourWay get a simple menu that provides access to the full range of services the company offers.

Second is to encourage consumers who might have limited themselves in their shopping options, say Lands' End fans, to explore other Sears Holding products and services, such as, perhaps, Jaclyn Smith apparel, via stores, websites or cell phones and related devices.

Integrating its multi-channel approach to retailing gives Sears Holding the chance to cross-market the array of products and services available and get consumers thinking of them as options at the ready rather than a maze of tenuously related functions. Certainly consumers will need some help getting familiar with the full range of Sears electronic offerings as they include:

• Web Sites. ShopYourWay will comprehensively represent the expanding Sears Holding online merchandise assortment. Sears.com, for example, now offers 100,000 tools online, well beyond the 7,000 to 8,000 available in stores. The ShopYourWay integration will facilitate its informing Kmart.com customers about the availability of Sears tools and Sears.com customers about the 300,000 books offered on Kmart's website. ShopYourWay also promotes Sears Holding exclusive brands Craftsman, Kenmore, DieHard, Lands' End, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer across sites and functions.

• Web to Store. The service offers frugal consumers, and that group has grown with the recession, the option of picking up their online purchases free in stores, something that functions not only as a service but promotes shopping expanded assortments as well. With free store delivery, shopping web-only items doesn't necessarily mean paying a delivery fee, something Sears points out. The retailer makes store pick up easy by delivering products to curbside and by permitting third party retrieval.

• Store to Web. Another way to make the electronic shopping work for store customers, Sears now mount internet kiosks at stores, allowing customers to order out of stock items or select from the expanded assortment available online, a service that comes with free home shipping.

• Mobile Commerce. Consumers can sign up for Sears2Go mobile phone shopping through ShopYourWay, further promoting the service with offers for email discounts and sale notification text alerts.

• 1-800-4-MY-HOME. ShopYourWay establishes a complementary online option consumers can use to schedule the home repairs, installation and delivery services 1-800-4-MY-HOME provides while referencing the number for those who prefer using the phone to set up an appointment or just to ask a few questions.

The capabilities and services Sears is offering and adding over the next few weeks have the development of ShopYourWay in mind as well as immediate sales for the company, Aiello noted, even if he wouldn't yet detail them. However, he pointed to the example of the personal shopper to indicate how Sear plans to make ShopYourWay more than just an easier way to navigate an increasingly complicated electronic selling proposition. The service, accessed over the phone, by instant message or via email, can help consumers find something on the Sears Holding system or beyond. Aiello said that, in his own case, a personal shopper helped him find another company that offered baby furniture complementing a product he bought on a Sears website that didn't carry the accessories he wanted.