Shoppers weep for Sears while buying on Amazon
Yearning for past makes them forget its problems
Eric Karkovack got his first Nintendo system from Sears, a gift from his grandmother. The first credit card he ever had also was from Sears. And he treasures his memories of shopping for clothes and checking out his father’s new tires.
Yet the 41-year-old web designer from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, last ventured inside the much-loved store a few years ago, when he was looking for a stove.
He didn’t buy one there.
As news of the storied retailer’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection broke, Karkovack was among the throngs of people who turned to social media to mourn.
The outpouring featured the same sentiment over and over again – nostalgia for a chain that stood for the milestones of life, like family photos, first sets of tools, appliances for new homes.
All the sackcloth and ashes – neither of which was sold in the famous Wish Book, among the most mentioned memory cited in all the online eulogies – rarely mentioned the obvious: None of these people actually shopped at Sears anymore.
“It’s been several years since I’ve been to a store,” Karkovack said. “It’s easy to look back now for me. The stores just got so poorly run and it seemed like selection was very poor.”
That’s the naked truth no one wants to mention when it comes to the iconic back-to-school clothing destination. All the consumer kvetching lacks honesty.
“If this really did mean so much to you, you’re not shopping there. You’re saying, ‘Why isn’t my product here? I ordered it an hour ago on Amazon Prime,’” said Jason Dorsey, founder of the Austin-based Center for Generational Kinetics, which researches the retail industry.
It’s the very problems that drove shoppers from the Sears bosom to online upstarts and more aggressive brick-and-mortar players, including Walmart, that those bemoaning the bankruptcy are forgetting.
Outdated brands, a minimal presence online and no heavy promotions are among the reasons the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based store failed.
Psychologists call the phenomenon of remembering only the positive the “rosy reflection bias.” What these people are nostalgic about are often experiences from their youth that makes it all the more poignant.
“Sears closing just seems like people think, ‘Wow, I’m losing a piece of my childhood.’ It’s a little bit of selective forgetting.” said nostalgia expert Andrew Abeyta, a Rutgers UniversityCamden assistant professor of psychology, who was compelled for the same reason to visit Toys R Us last year when it went under.
“It may not be a longing for Sears, per se, but a longing for the time of going to brick-and-mortar stores or dreaming of things we couldn’t buy or the social experience of going to the store with their families. ... Sears is a symbol of that life dying away.”
Among those participating in this national trip down memory lane is Susette Degen.
Her mother took her and her three siblings to Sears during the summer to cool off in the store’s air conditioning. At Christmas time, Degen, now 56, circled all the toys she wanted in the Wish Book and as a teen, bought a bathing suit for a boathouse party and a beloved Bay City Rollers album.
“I knew they were in trouble, but I thought they’d pull out of it,” said the Minooka, Illinois, restaurateur, who more recently bought her daughter “Finding Nemo” shoes and herself a toaster and table linens there.
“We went there for everything, except food. ... I felt really bad when I saw their doors closing. I did go there occasionally, but I could’ve gone there more.”
Degen still can’t bring herself to call the Chicago landmark once named the Sears Tower by its new name, the Willis Tower. The 110-story building’s name was changed in 2009.
Notably absent from the online retail-inspired therapy sessions are millennials and Gen Z shoppers, who view Sears with the same eye-rolling distance that Gen Xers and Baby Boomers may feel about Woolworth’s.
“It was the perfect storm for millennials to not have any emotional nostalgia. If you told them Amazon was going to go away, there might be riots,” Dorsey said.
“Sears basically invented the catalog, and yet we have millennials who don’t even check the mail.”