Retailer's nostalgia does not reflect the reality

Still, the 41-year-old Carlisle, Pennsylvania web designer, last ventured into the beloved store a few years ago, while he was looking for a stove.

He did not buy one there.

When the news of the legendary chapter 11 bankruptcy protection retailer was announced, Karkovack was among the crowd of people who turned to social media to mourn. The bestowal has taken over the same feeling over and over again – nostalgia for a chain that represented life's milestones, like family photos, first tools, appliances for new homes. All the bags and ashes – which were not included in the famous Wish Book, among the most cited memoirs in all online praise – rarely mentioned the evidence: no more of these people actually did shopped at Sears.

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"I have not been to a store for many years," said Karkovack. "It's easy to look back for me now." The stores were so poorly managed and it seemed like the selection was very mediocre.

This is the pure truth that no one wants to mention with regard to the iconic destination of the back-to-school clothes. All the kvetching consumer lacks honesty.

"If it really meant so much to you, you're not going to shop there, you say," Why is my product not here? I ordered it an hour ago on Amazon Prime, "said Jason Dorsey, founder of the Austin-based Center for Generation Kinetics, which conducts research on the retail sector.

These are the very problems that drove Sears' chest buyers to online punters and more aggressive gamblers, like Walmart, than those who complain about bankruptcy forget. Obsolete brands, a minimal online presence and no heavy promotion are among the reasons that pushed the Hoffman Estates-based store in Illinois to fail.

Psychologists call the memory phenomenon only the positive "pink reflection bias". What these people are nostalgic, it is often the experiences of their youth that make all this poignant.

"The closure of Sears just seems to make people think," Wow, I'm losing a little bit of my childhood. "It's a bit of selective forgetfulness." Andrew Abeyta, an expert in nostalgia, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Camden, was forced for the same reason to visit Toys R Us. 39, last year. "This may not be a desire for Sears in itself, but a desire for time to go to the physical stores or dream of things we could not buy or social experience to go to the store with their families … Sears is a symbol of this endangered life. "

Susette Degen is one of the participants in this national trip in the past. Her mother took her with her three siblings to Sears during the summer to cool off in the store's air conditioning. At Christmas, Degen, who is now 56 years old, circled all the toys that she wanted in the book of dreams and, as a teenager, bought a swimsuit for a boathouse party and a darling album from Bay City Rollers.

"I knew they were having problems, but I thought they'd come out of it," said Minooka restaurateur, in Illinois, who recently bought shoes "Finding Nemo "to his daughter, as well as a toaster and table linens. "We went for everything except for the food … I felt really bad when I saw their doors close.I went there once in a while, but I would have could go there more often. "

Degen still can not bring himself to call the Chicago landmark once called the Sears Tower under its new name, Willis Tower. The name of the 110-storey building was changed in 2009.

Among those absent from online retail therapy sessions are Millennials and Generation Z buyers, who see Sears with the same distance as the Generation X and Baby Boomers groups from Woolworth.

"It was the perfect storm for millennia to not have emotional nostalgia.If you told them that Amazon was going to leave, there could be riots," Dorsey said. "Sears basically invented the catalog, and yet we have millennia that do not even check the mail."

TO CLOSE

Sears on Monday demanded protection of Chapter 11 from bankruptcy, under the weight of its debt and its huge losses. (October 15)
AP