Sears Loyalty ProgramSears Holding Corp.’s Shop Your Way loyalty program is a vital ingredient of the company’s recipe for transformation.

During the company’s Dec. 3 fiscal third-quarter earnings conference call, Rob Schriesheim, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, referenced the impact of the Shop Your Way loyalty program.

“We continue to make progress in our transformation from a traditional, store-network based retail business model to a more asset-light, member-centric integrated retailer leveraging our Shop Your Way platform,” he explained, according to Seeking Alpha.

Last month, Leena Munjal, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience & Integrated Retail, Sears Holdings, talked to Loyalty360 about the Shop Your Way loyalty program.

“We’re engaging our members more than ever,” Munjal explained. “We regularly surprise our members with points they can use on their most relevant purchases. Our social community is a key Shop Your Way differentiator, allowing members to view exclusive celebrity content where they can interact with celebrities like Nicki Minaj and Adam Levine and a community where shoppers can connect and share shopping tips, their favorite products, and more.”

What’s more, Sears is offering more personalized services, such as: Personal Shoppers, Sweepstakes, Get Advice and Member Assist, and Shop Your Way Birthday.

Schriesheim noted that Sears remains focused on restoring profitability to the company and offered some positive results.

“We successfully improved EBITDA performance during the third quarter as we continued to become more efficient with our promotional programs and to invest in targeted and personalized digital interactions with our members,” he explained. “Simultaneously, we continue to manage expenses as part of our transformation strategy, noting that since 2012 we have reduced our annual expenses by about $1.3 billion. During the third quarter, we delivered an EBITDA improvement of $16 million versus last year.”Sears Loyalty Program

What’s more, the third quarter marked the company’s fifth consecutive quarter of improved EBITDA performance.

“We have taken deliberate actions with respect to our promotional design and marketing spend in pursuit of this objective,” Schriesheim said. “As expected, the result of these actions was that, in many categories, we saw an increase in profitability despite experiencing comparable store sales declines. Second, the Apparel and Consumer Electronics businesses represented half of our comparable store sales decline.”

Sears plans to change its Consumer Electronics business model to one that requires less working capital and operating expenses by leveraging partners to continue to meet the needs of members, Schriesheim said.

“The change in business model has negatively impacted our comparable store sales in this category; however, it has resulted in improved profitability, which is our primary focus,” he said. “Additionally, recent business actions positively changing the operations of the Sears Auto Center business has resulted in improved EBITDA.” While we are making progress in changing our apparel business model to better meet the needs of our members, it has not yet translated into improved financial performance.”

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