TY  - JOUR
AU  - Raff, Daniel
AU  - Temin, Peter
TI  - Sears Roebuck in the Twentieth Century: Competition, Complementarities, and the Problem of Wasting Assets
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 102
PY  - 1997
Y2  - June 1997
DO  - 10.3386/h0102
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0102
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0102.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel Raff
Department of Management
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6370
Tel: 215/898-3804
Fax: 215/898-0401
E-Mail: raff@wharton.upenn.edu

Peter Temin
Department of Economics, E52-408
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/253-3126
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: ptemin@mit.edu
M1  - published as Daniel Raff, Peter Temin. "Sears, Roebuck in the Twentieth Century: Competition, Complementarities, and the Problem of Wasting Assets," in Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff and Peter Temin, editors, "Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries" University of Chicago Press (1999)

AB  - Sears Roebuck and Co. faced similar challenges in the 1920s and the 1980s.  On the strength of the early period's strategic investment decisions, the company grew into the nation's largest retailer and a pervasive factor in the economy.  In the later period, unanswered challenges nearly destroyed the company.  We analyze the elements that contributed to the success in the 1920s and to the near disaster in the 1980s and place them in a broader and more systematic context.  We argue that successful innovations combine a focus on an attractive market with an exploitation and even enhancement of a firm's existing competitive strengths.
ER  -