They ignored the internet.
That always shocked me, given Sears was essentially the 19th Century Amazon. If anyone knew how to sell remotely (at one time) it was Sears, and yet their web site has always been terrible. Didn’t help any when Lampert merged them with the cancerous Kmart.
The irony being that Sears founded the concept of Mail-Order, which could arguably be considered as 'the Internet of its day'
Additionally, Sears was also an early adopter of a consumer 'online service' with Prodigy.
Sad that the company got run over by those who recognized the potential of the Internet while not positioning itself to profit from the new technology.
~ MM ~
They looked down on their customers too...
They were set up perfectly to do internet sales and slowly begin to cut the number of brick and mortar stores. With their catalog all they had to do was put it on the internet and start undercutting Amazon and Walmart. Sears, still stuck in 1972.