Kmart's Failure Essay

Kmart has been chosen for organizational change, because of its lack in leadership and management. “Lots of companies fail because, they do not adapt to changes in the marketplace, so it isn’t necessarily surprising that Kmart descended into bankruptcy due to a series of bad management decisions (Lewis, 2003).” One major issue with Kmart is that they have failed to update their stores. Kmart management has made the decision to leave them the way they have been since the late 80’s and early 90’s. Kmart is failing because its advertising department has lost touch with its target markets (if it ever really had a target market). The last advertising idea was about a blue light bulb, that bored people about their layaway program (Swanson, 2012). Compared to Walmart and Target’s advertising platforms, Kmart failed miserably to compete with them.

They did attempt to bring in more business by partnering with Univision (a Spanish-language television network here in the United States) by creating a game show that’s set in a Kmart store. They made another small effort around 2011 to introduce Sophia Vergara (from the TV show Modern Family) in hopes that it would cater to the Hispanic community (Swanson, 2012). Another major reason that Kmart is failing is because it doesn’t know what it is, it has failed to create its own brand personality. For example, Walmart has created a strong brand personality by letting the consumers know that it is adamant on having rock bottom prices. What is Kmart’s brand personality? “Kmart is a brand that lost its way (Turner, 2003)”. Two thirds of customers purchases are driven by the brand, and because Kmart failed to establish itself people stopped purchasing from them (Turner,