For me, this is it in a nutshell. I worked next door (as in a 30 foot walk) from a Sears and popped in to quickly grab a couple things in a 30 minute gap between meetings. In 10 minutes, I had what I wanted, and got in line to checkout. I was the 6th person in line...and eventually put my stuff down and walked out because I still hadn't managed to check out 20 minutes later. There was only one employee handling checkout, and that employee was moving at a slower-than-glacial pace. Even though several other employees were milling around the various departments, no one came over to help.
There are a lot of reasons Sears failed, but for me, making the most painful part of the process the part WHERE I GIVE THEM MONEY, was the last straw.
Another example of a low wage industry where paying employees more doesn't work in the grand scheme are hotels. People like to stay in newer, renovated, upscale hotels. Well if one hotel pays more than it has to, then it's owners save less capital with which they can purchase other land and build a new hotel on, or to renovate an existing one. So the hotel owners that pay the employees as little as possible and work them as much as possible end up with more money to invest in new builds or renovations, and customers end up going to those hotels, while the hotel that paid its employees well will lose business.
Unfortunately, good customer service only goes so far, especially when your clientele can barely afford it and they readily chose to forego it to save money.
Sears used to be like Trader Joe's: customer service was great, the best products were the house brands, and if you weren't satisfied, you walked back in and got a new one or a refund.
Then Sears' new management went off in pursuit of higher profits and killed everything.
Trader Joes are usually located in areas that have higher income and more young people. They do offer good customer service, but I also don't think Trader Joes could cater to as many people as Sears', and Sears stores and inventory seem much more costly to operate.
Huh? The parent commenter was just describing how poor the service was at Sears stores.
Is it? Paying employees well isn't what killed Sears. Sears has been a ghost town for years, and anyone who's been in one in the past 20 years can probably tell you why. The customer experience simply sucks. Help is hard to find, checkout is slow, their warranties are garbage and a pain to exercise, and their once-great store brands have been either penny-pinched into mediocrity or sold off.