Case Studies

Situation

Sears Holdings Corporation, the nation’s fifth largest broadline retailer, has a longstanding corporate commitment to interacting with and responding to its customers. In support of that commitment, the company recently decided to develop online communities for two of its leading brands, Sears and Kmart, with the purpose of helping the brands better engage and understand their customers, the products they buy, and their experiences at the two retailing giant

Solution

Sears turned to Viewpoints Network, a social technology and media company that specializes in building online communities and motivating social influencers, to design and power its MySears and MyKmart communities.

Using the Viewpoints Technology Platform, a fully configurable, customizable and scalable social platform, Viewpoints designed the MySears and MyKmart communities with a rich social feature set to create a two-way dialogue between the retailers and their customers. The communities allow consumers to create social profiles, upload photos, create user tags, connect with friends and other likeminded consumers, write blog posts, track their readership stats and exchange private messages with other community members.

In addition, MySears and MyKmart give members the ability to write highly personalized reviews, post comments on others’ reviews, participate in discussion boards and offer ideas that the community can vote on. The sites are also highly integrated within Sears.com and Kmart.com to offer consumers a richer shopping experience.

Results

The MySears and MyKmart sites are vibrant social communities unparalleled among their traditional retail peers in their rich feature set and interactive capabilities. Beyond simply providing their consumers the ability to publish static product reviews, the communities allow the two brands to develop true, ongoing dialogues with their customers to improve their overall Sears and Kmart shopping experiences.

“At Sears we believe engaging our shoppers and providing the tools for them to get advice before they buy are central to our future,” said Rob Harles, Sears’ Vice President of Community. “The Viewpoints Technology Platform enables MyKmart and MySears to fulfill these goals and provides shoppers with a truly interactive experience to connect with likeminded individuals and have a say in Sears’ future by sharing their thoughts directly with us.”