Sears Holdings Corp. said Wednesday that it has hired former Best Buy Co. executive John Walden to the new post of chief customer officer, putting him in charge of customer strategies and new business development.
Walden, 47, will report to Sears Chairman Edward Lampert, the Connecticut hedge-fund billionaire who controls 43 percent of Hoffman Estates-based Sears. Walden also will be a member of the office of the chairman. He starts his job Jan. 29.
The creation of the new post comes as Sears has combated years of steadily declining sales and struggled to find a successful marketing strategy.
“With retail as competitive as it is and as cutthroat as ever, you’re seeing companies create these uber-marketing and customer roles as a way to acknowledge they need a depth of understanding of their customers,” said Torrey Foster Jr., managing partner at Heidrick & Struggles, a Chicago-based executive search firm.
Last week, Joan Chow, the chief marketing officer of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. division, left the company after nine years. Maureen McGuire, the IBM Corp. veteran that Lampert hired in October 2005, remains as chief marketing officer of the combined Sears-Kmart operation. She will report to Walden, as will Sears? home services group and direct commerce businesses, excluding Lands? End (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Sales at stores open at least a year, a common measure of a retailer’s health, fell in November and December by 5.6 percent at Sears stores and fell 1.2 percent at Kmart stores from the same period a year ago, the company disclosed this month.
Walden left his job as chief operating officer at Skokie-based Internet grocer Peapod LLC in 1999 to revamp Best Buy’s online operations as president of the Internet division.
During his nearly eight years at the Minneapolis-based consumer electronics company, Walden held several customer-focus-related posts, most recently as executive vice president of Best Buy’s customer business group.
Walden also has worked at Ameritech Corp. and Storage Technology Corp. In addition he practiced law with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in Chicago.
In a press release, Lampert said he is counting on Walden to help Sears become “more entrepreneurial and customer driven.”
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