I think Sears and Kmart are largely irrelevant now unfortunately. People don't have much of a high opinion of them in general, and they certainly aren't high on the holiday shopping list. I suppose Sears' appliance department still does fairly well, given Kenmore is still reviewed by several websites and other organizations.
But with so many appliance options these days - Lowes, Home Depot, Best Buy, and smaller appliance stores, there are many options to compare. Same with the tool department.
And most people seem to buy clothes elsewhere.
Kmart allowed themselves to get overtaken by Walmart by not updating and expanding their stores when Walmart got big. And now there's Target and Kohls.
At this point I don't know that Sears and Kmart would be a huge loss, shopping wise, given the popularity of Amazon, which seems to be basically the modern catalog shopping.
One can go in Sears or Kmart and only see a few employees, usually one at jewelry, maybe one at another clothing dept counter, one in shoes, one or two in appliances and a couple in tools. That's about it. I started noticing their cutbacks and unmanned checkout counters around 2008 or so. Maybe it started earlier, but it seemed before that when multiple checkouts open was the norm.
I can remember when Kmart was so busy they had three lanes open on any given day and at one point tried self checkouts. Plus at least one checkout open in the garden center. Now, it's just the customer service counter and maybe one garden center lane open at peak times. And the garden center probably has very few plants if any by now.
One can find deals at Sears on clearance items. A few weeks ago I saw a Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer, display model on sale for $99. Housewares and vacuums can have some pretty good deals when items are returned or old displays.
