If K-Mart is now Sear Essentials, what is Sears?

Sear purchased K-Mart and decided to change its name. Good Idea.

But then they fell into the Line Extension Trap.

That's the trap Al Ries and Jack Trout warned everyone about in their pioneering book, Positioning, the Battlefield for Your Mind. When you take your name and apply it with a modifier to a different, possibly related, product or service, that's line extension.

The danger is dilution, and it's two-fold: First, it dilutes the original brand and the position it has fought hard to establish. Second, it tends to dilute the loyalty gleaned for the original brand. The result is the original and the extension share the sales once enjoyed by the original.

Sears has done a fine job to introducing new product lines and store concepts in the past: Craftsman, Die-Hard, The Great Indoors. But they went against their success formula with Sears  Essentials.

Will other customers come to the same conclusion I did - that I should shop at Sears Essential for essentials and shop at Sears for non-essentials?

This is a case of poor branding that attempts to solve one problem while creating a larger one.

I agree the K-Mart name needed to be purged if it were to become a viable chain. It was carrying too much baggage.

I also agree that there should be some means of associating the new acquisition with the Sears tradition. But NOT by line extension.

Here's how I'd have solved the problem.

I'd go into the rich history and heritage of Sears and...

I'd have named it Roebucks.

Martin Jelsema
Signature Strategies
Helping smaller companies profit from the power of branding

www.signaturestrategies.biz