Sears and the dishwasher industry :: essays research papers

Where should Sears character the dishwashers from? Sears is the giant leading broad line retail merchant providing merchandise and related services. In keeping with its sourcing philosophy, Sears gener solelyy prefers to work with one, rather than multiple suppliers. When the supplier does not offer a specific type of appliance, Sears would source it somewhere else. Sears objective is to share as much as possible of the production and assembly process with the suppliers products. Based on the readings one important fortune of Sears sourcing strategy is to ensure that its suppliers have stable top management over a long term. Sears sources its dishwashers from D&M, because of D&Ms cost position. They would not find elsewhere the quality and the price that D&M offers. Sears itself designs the dishwashers based on the customers preferences and provides them the best quality with the best price named Kenmore.GE is the toughest competitor to Sears as well as to D&M and considering sou rcing from GE would not be feasible, because GEs policy is that GE product would drool GE name. Now GE is a customer of Sears that in the same time competes with Kenmores products.Another souring possibility could have been Whirlpool which uniform GE uses its name for its products, but for Sears it would not make economic sense to go towards that direction. After Sears, GE, and Whirlpool, there really is no full-line name in the merchandise of any significance. Sears as well as the customers are content with D&Ms products, but one important issue could be if D&M will keep up with its R&D in order to continue competing with GE as well as with Whirlpool. After all these years it will be very difficult for Sears to pull back from D&M and go after another supplier.