Buying a trademark means buying the customers that honor that brand. As the Internet continues on its way, "branding" is a lot less important than "pricing" ...
Again, unless you combine operations you are not capitalizing since the largely compete with each other.
Sear's is a brand name and cannot be used by anyone unless the brand is sold or licensed. I don't have any problem with a Chinese furniture company when the USA doesn't build furniture anymore. All I care about is price, quality and if I like it. If we cared about where China has invested their money in the USA then we probably won't have anything to buy. Stores are not merged because of the brand recognition. If there are 2-3 7-11's in the same block they are surely owned by the same company since no other company can use the 7-11 brand. There must be trillion$ of foreign money invested in the USA and these investments have certainly helped the US economy. I think it would be rare to find a 100% independent business with zero foreign influence which would also include company stocks and material procurement...
Anyone remember S.S. Kresge? How about Woolworths, or Woolco? Retailers who don't adapt die. Walmart is investing a fortune to combat Amazon, only time will tell how they succeed.
We shop at lots of places and I have no interest in one over the area...we buy from Walmart and Amazon...for different reasons. I like options...
EASY MONEY The retail market has been a prime example (amongst many, many others) of how America's market-economy is increasingly concentrated. This is NOT GOOD for consumers! Particularly if the government does not intervene in the markets having made the necessary analyses regarding "market concentration" and its resulting "lack of competition". A market-economy must show diversity in its make-up to assure that consumers have products/services at a competitive price. Not the "lowest price" (as we are learning from the slip-shod products arriving increasingly from China) but a "decent price" that is the result of "fair competition on open-markets". And, believe me, were Amazon and WalMart ever to be found colluding on prices, it would surprise NOBODY; that outcome having been proven many a time in the retail industry. WHAT HAPPENED? America went on a profits-binge. Why? Because (1) high-profits make for better Top Managment total revenues (stock-options, etc.) But also (2) because Americans have taken to the stock-market (as a personal investment vehicle) and profits are a harbinger of higher stock-market prices. And therefore stock-market values that please stock-holders (who buy "low" and sell "high"). Including not just Jack 'n Jane America, but also Wall Street investment houses. DESTINY If you want to tie your financial destiny to the stock-market, who am I to discourage you? But, for every stock-market value rise there is an inevitable fall. History teaches us that sad lesson. (First grandly in the 1930s Great Depression and more recently in the 2008/2010 Great Recession - and numerous times in between on a lesser scale.) But we rarely listen-to-the-lesson, don't we? Why? Because the glare of "easy money" blinds us in the short-term and ruins us in the long-term. MY POINT? I'm not against high-income earners. I am for particularly Confiscatory Progressive Taxation beyond a certain exorbitant level. Were we more concerned with higher-taxation (particularly of the super-rich), the government would have more tax-revenues* with which to provide free Health-Care and free Tertiary Education. Both of which are badly needed in our country, and would do Americans a world of good, given present exorbitant costs for either ... *And we'd have less cravenness by those "working" the stock-market - since any excessively huge revenue-profits would be taxed away.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCT CATEGORY No, the dont "really" compete with one another everywhere. Both are highly price conscious, yes, but given that Amazon's only "real competition" is local retail stores, Amazon is concerned about Internet Customers and WalMart Local Customers. Which means, the overwhelming buying-impulse will be conditioned by the nature of the product. WalMart will go where Amazon is at predominantly on the Internet. It is unlikely that Amazon will do the same to WalMart. (Mind you, it could, but I doubt seriously that will happen given the funding necessary to start a local retailing business.) Example: For those wanting a snowblower, far more customers will want to see/touch it rather than just look at a photo and receive the article at their doorstep. This market-characteristic largely stymies Amazon's reach in terms of product-marketing category. (Unless he opens his massive stockage centers to the direct retailing business.) Moreover, with both obtaining significant percentages of Total Retail Marketing, it benefits BOTH to enter into a non-collusive market "agreement". Meaning that they both maintain about the same product-price and no real competition, which best allows comfortable margins for either. And American consumers will likely not have much other choice price-wise*. I.e., no real market competition because - due to volume purchasing - they prevent others from entering the market ... *Conditioned upon the fact that Jack Ma does not take Alibaba into retailing over the Internet and give Jeff Bezos a real competitive headache ...
Right, so you were writing about the "Retail Market". Both Amazon and WalMart are "retailers". I took it upon myself to enlarge the subject. Tell me how I was wrong to do so ...
When I am talking about Sears and Kmart competing with each by not combining into single super stores and you declare me wrong because of two unrelated companies to the ones I was speaking to, you are not "enlarging the subject". You were simply wrong.
As I recall, there was a real estate play involved in the Sears K-Mart merger, but I think the value of that retail real estate was overstated. I know Sears did own a lot of their locations.
Yes and nothing you posted will change the fact that you are wrong about Sears and Kmart having made a huge mistake by not combing operation into a single store, deciding instead to compete with each other for the same consumers over a huge chunk of their merchandise lines.
Corporations also play the real estate holding market game...Right now MCDonald's is the largest land holding company in the US and the largest toy distributor.....They too were faltering 15 years ago and decided changes were needed to keep it's customer base and have affordable prices for their products, something that Sear and JC Penney refused to do until the last couple of years...The market is saturated with multiples of retailers with products that are higher than they can compete against companies like Wal Mart..Capitalism requires an ever expanding market, these companies can only expand through retailing their products in new markets, thus the push for trade agreements..The home nation of the corporations resort to a reverse mercantilism to expand, screwing the home markets in the attempt to expand...Unemployment is lower, but purchasing power has decreased..
ABOUT "CAPITAL" It is not "capitalism" per se that "requires an ever expanding market". Capitalism is not a "theory" as it is mistakenly taken to be by many. It is simply a mechanism that replaced barter, and facilitated what we have today called a "market economy". Where goods are exchanged for money (another word for "capital".) Dictionary definition of "capital": Wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available for a purpose such as starting a company or investing. Yes, Wealth (which is the accumulation of revenue in the form of "assets") is also "capital". Capitalism has become a dirty-word in the 19th century because of the works of Marx and others. Thus the word has a "political inference" due "Socialism" - itself morphing into "Social Democracy" that accepts "capital" but also requires "income fairness". Capital is neither dirty nor clean, it is what it is - money, assets of all kinds. Anything in fact worth trading that has intrinsic value. Where the word becomes contentious is in its accumulation ...
JCP and Sears elected to become anchored to small and midsized malls which are failing miserably. Ironically, megamalls and these new hybrid strip malls that are basically lanes of smaller stores with exterior parking and interior pedestrian walkways are doing very well. They are like DC Georgetown without the vehicle traffic or larger versions of Cleveland's Shaker Square.
