One of the country’s oldest retailers, Sears, is building on what has become a strong e-commerce program with some new improvements to its existing marketplace platform that will now provide smaller merchants a venue for selling their own goods in local markets and facilitate sales.
The Local Marketplace was launched in a beta version last week. It primarily gives those retailers in partnerships to sell through Sears.com the ability to offer customers same- or next-day pickup on items they order at their own storefront locations, Sears or K-mart locations or even through home delivery.
The option is currently available only to shoppers in the Chicago, New York City, Washington, DC and Boston areas.
“Customers are at the heart of everything we do,” says Imran Jooma, Sears’ general manager of e-commerce. “In order to further our commitment to providing our customers with choice and convenience, we’re providing customers with additional shopping features that our competitors wouldn’t offer, including opening our marketplace to local merchants and delivering the items directly to our customers’ homes. We’re open to exploring different and innovative offerings for customers as long as it aligns with our goal to help create a better and more personal shopping experience for them, whether they’re shopping in store or online through our expanded local marketplace.”
The upgrades to the Local Marketplace don’t end at expanded delivery options. Sears has added a new tab at the top of its web page titled “Shop for Items I Need” which gives shoppers quick access to information on the products that are actually available for local delivery or pick-up. The tab lets visitors classify the urgency of the products they’re looking for with “now,” “later today,” “tomorrow,” or “anytime” labels and then directs them to enter his or her zip code to find out which of those items are available locally.
Already, shoppers can find food and groceries, beauty products, baby and kids items and pet supplies in the Local Marketplace. Sears envisions more product categories being added down the line as it tries to bring regional merchants and family-owned retailers into the mix over time.
To help facilitate the growth of available merchants, Sears is automatically adding all new retailers in its traditional marketplace to the Local program. Those new retailers must only designate pick-up locations that Sears can verify and provide accurate product inventory data before Sears adds those products to the Local Marketplace.
Leave your thoughts and comments below!
