Kmart is one of America's most well-known retailing names, yet in the past ten years the company has fallen on hard times. Competition has come in multiple forms, from discounts like Wal-Mart and Costco, to category killers like Home Depot to online retailers like Amazon.com. Struggling with declining sales and mounting debt, Kmart was purchased by equally struggling Sears Holdings in the latter's attempt to reshape its business and improve

Kmart -- Soaring High ShopperTrak's National Retail Sales Estimate (NRSE) reported that U.S. retail sales for the week ending April 23 increased 9.9% as compared to the same week last year. Although adverse weather throughout the Midwest led to a sharp 13.0% week-over- week decline, the Easter holiday calendar shift continued to positively impact the year-over-year retail comparison, posting one of the strongest yearly increases seen in 2005. (Vargas, 2005) Retail industry

In fact, Lampert is cited as still frequently drawing his top picks from consulting the shareholder letters of Buffet, and drawing from Buffet's advice to guide him in his own investment decisions. Warren Buffet is famed as the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Like Buffett, Lampert is said to seek investments in "stable businesses with predictable income streams that have very strong brands," that are currently suffering troubled fortunes

Wal-Mart will also adjust itself to the economic environment in order to remain competitive. After 9/11 Wal-Mart recognized a change in consumer spending at their stores and adjusted prices to reflect this trend. Wal-mart understood "the consumer need of a breather at the start of s long-awaited consumer spending recession." What did his business philosophy, model for business success over the long-range and subsequent adjustments due to consumer trends amount

This would leave the company with the option to choose the supplier with the best-priced, best-quality products. The threat of substitute products and services is high, particularly from major competitors such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a major player in the industry, and the merged companies will need to be significantly creative to maintain their competitive advantage in terms of products. Furthermore, the rivalry among competitors in the industry is quite

The exponential growth of the Internet has also served as the catalyst for the growth of highly collaborative, interactive forums and platforms on which Delphi-like brainstorming can be accomplished (Decker, Wagner, Scholz, 2005). Conversely many of the external relationships companies have and that are essential to understanding how the strategic planning process will impact an organization lend themselves to quantification. An example of this level of quantification of external