Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Incompetence Tainted an American Icon

By Marcia Layton Turner

Book Overview

An insightful look at how Kmart's management destroyed the company Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins spins an intriguing tale of the missteps of a retail giant who once had the industry in the palm of its hand and foolishly let it all slip away. This engaging book weaves corporate history in with financial analysis and commentary that leaves the reader with a better sense of where Kmart has been and what its potential is for a turnaround. This first in-depth examination of Kmart clearly identifies and discusses the ten missteps and miscalculations Kmart's CEOs have repeatedly made, including resisting investments in technology, brand mismanagement, and haphazard expansion, to name a few. Author Marcia Layton Turner taps many of her vast contacts within the retail business community to get the inside scoop on what really brought this once mighty retail giant to its knees. Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins is written for readers who find themselves wondering how a company with such bright prospects could end up filing for bankruptcy. Marcia Layton Turner (Rochester, NY) is the bestselling author of The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Small Business and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting Your Own Business. With an MBA in corporate strategy and marketing from the University of Michigan, she spent several years with Eastman Kodak in marketing and marketing communications. She is currently a freelance writer/author and ghostwriter for college-level business textbooks. Turner has also written for several top magazines and Web sites.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471435937
• ISBN13: 9780471435938
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An excellent read!

If you're into retail marketing in any capacity, you owe it to yourself to read this book. At least twice. It's that good. (Marcia, if you read any of your reviews, I want to know you wrote a fantastic, easy to read book. One of my favorites. Thank you!)

Very Interesting Analysis

I read this book with interest from both the perspective of a consumer and a business person. As a consumer, I stopped shopping at KMart a long time ago. This book gave me the understanding of how the customer service at KMart ended up being such a low priority to a retailer when it should have been the highest priority. As a business person, it was fascinating to read about one more example of how egos in Corporate America can cause the downfall of an established institution. A recommended read...

Well researched, well written. Well Worth Reading.

When I picked up this book, I expected to find some interesting insights into why KMart, once so widely known and popular, ran into all its problems. A company whose stores were once part of the American landscape and whose blue light specials were exciting mini-events, spun into bankruptcy on January 22, 2002. What happened?I looked at the author's credentials and, frankly, was a bit dismayed that she was author of "The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Small Business." Even though the title is described as a best-seller, I questioned whether such an author would be able to produce the kind of study that the K-Mart subject demands. Looking further through the book, I discovered that my concerns were totally unfounded. This book is quite well researched, as evidenced by the abundant footnotes at the end of each chapter. Turner lists, in her acknowledgements, some of the people she conferred with in putting this book together. Impressive. Almost academic. The book begins with two features I appreciated. One was a chapter, called the introduction, which effectively sets the stage for the in-depth look at what happened... and why. The other feature is a time line that includes progressive events at Kmart and at Wal-Mart. A fascinating fact to ponder is that Kmart and Wal-Mart were started in the same year. Throughout the book, Turner interweaves and compares the strategies-and implications-of Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Target, as well as other retailers. This approach adds value to this book for every retailer-every business leader-who designs strategy with anticipated results. The bibliography and comprehensive index make this book a most usable tool.A chapter is devoted to each of the Deadly Sins: Brand Mismanagement, Lack of Customer Knowledge, Underestimating Wal-Mart, Lousy Locations, Ignoring Store Appearance, Technology Aversion, Supply Chain Disconnect, Lack of Focus, Strategy du Jour, and Repeating the Same Mistakes. You'll learn about strategic blunders, tactical mismanagement, and operation deficiencies that crippled the potentially powerful chain retailer. Details even go down to the level of describing how insufficient staffing levels in the stores confounded efforts to keep the aisles clear of incoming merchandise, let alone serve the customer. While you'll shake your head numerous times as you read this educational and insightful book, you'll gain new perspectives and cautions in the way you run your own business and life. Highly recommended.

Good Book with Some Frustrating Shortcomings

Marcia Turner does an excellent job of laying out what KMart has done wrong over the years and builds a very convincing case, citing mostly secondary sources such as retail trade journals. The writing is clear and lively, but the "10 Deadly Sins" idea is rather tentatively executed. Many chapters discuss multiple sins, and partly because the entire history of the company has to be addressed in each chapter there is a fair amount of repetition.But for me, the most frustrating thing about the book is that it is entirely an outsider's perspective. Turner does such an excellent job of documenting Kmart's persistent stupidity over many decades that at some point you want to hear from an insider to answer the question "what could they have been thinking?"A particular strength of the book is laying out the competitive landscape of discount retailing. One major unanswered question (which, granted, would be very difficult to answer) is how big a role pervasive corruption has played in Kmart's decline. The conviction of a senior real estate executive for bribery indicates that self-dealing in the company may have gone back much further than the executives who put the company in bankruptcy.