Is it BlueLight.com or Kmart.com? It’s both--for now
Kmart Corp. is heeding the advice of consultants and market observers who have been urging the company for months to align its web identity with its store identity: It is testing Kmart.com as the address of its web site. "This is strictly a consumer test to see if we achieve a better click-rate through our advertising efforts using the BlueLight.com URL or the Kmart URL," a spokesman says. "We are doing this as part of the restructuring underway at Kmart in an effort to focus on the customer`s needs and wants."
When BlueLight.com went live in 1999, market leaders believed that a web operation had to be separate from a corporate operation in order to be nimble enough to compete in the fast changing Internet world. But the thinking has swung 180 degrees since then and retailers are taking advantage of their infrastructures to leverage their web presence.
Kmart began testing the Kmart.com URL as part of its new Stuff of Life advertising campaign, which began Feb. 24. It will appear in further advertising over the next few weeks. The spokesman emphasizes that the test does not mean the URL will change anytime soon.
Duif Calvin, vice president in the global retail practice at Scient Inc., says the dual identities were too confusing for Kmart’s customers. "The strength of the brand is the ability to reach customers in multiple channels," she says. "With a company like Kmart that has a strong brand and a generation of history behind it, customers expect to see that name."
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