Business needs to adapt.
But first they must recognize the need.
What really sucks is when the writing is on the wall and nobody seems to listen to what is being said. Happened to me and I left the business.
But back to Sears.......
Sears was a big part of our early marriage life. A Sears outlet store was nearby, a huge one, Also a bit farther away was a Spiegel outlet and an Alden's outlet.
Just about everything we bought was bought from those three stores. When we moved away, there were no outlet stores (real outlet stores, not like the full price outlet mall crap they have now). So we continued to shop all three retail stores.
At one point we moved to Maryland. The first night in our new house on the bay was the hottest night of the year, and the AC stopped working. Had a home warrantee, turns out owned by Sears. This home was on Kent Island, which was essentially at sea level, and the water table was so high, one could not build a basement, so everybody had crawl spaces. Called them up, they sent a guy out the next morning, he was afraid of spiders so he would not go into the crawl space. The next day, another guy came out and he was claustrophobic. The THIRD day the guy came out and was afraid of snakes (we had black snakes on the island).
Three freaking days no ac.
Not one of them went to the heat pump where most of the controls are btw, and the heat pump is guess where - outside on a pad.
I went over to a neighbor's house, introduced myself, and borrowed some basic hand tools as our stuff had not arrived yet.
First thing I did was manually push in the contactor. It worked. Killed the power, took the contactor partially apart, wedged some cardboard in there to hold the contacts in, that house was COLD in the morning, let me tell you!. Picked up and installed a new contactor that day.
Never shopped at Sears again, ripped up my card, and told them to pound sand.
We bought so much from them. Every appliance, probably twice, many power tools, all my kid's clothes, many of our clothes, hardware, an engine hoist I still have, a maple woodworking bench I still have, and on and on. I still have a large corded angle grinder and a big belt sander, all at least 30 years old. 10" table saw, 10" radial arm saw, carbide blades up to 120 tooth, so much. Damn.
And I will never go in again.