Quick: what's North America's most popular department store?
(No fair peeking.)
We scanned last week's search logs looking for the names of popular department stores. (Let's say right up front that this list is pretty broad: Costco and Lord & Taylor don't have much in common except that each can be fairly called a "department store.")
Frankly, we expected to find unstoppable Wal-Mart leading the pack. But we were in for a surprise: an old-timer takes first position instead.
Here are the results, along with the percentage of searchers who requested each store:
25.1% Sears
23.1% Wal-Mart
9.9% JC Penney
9.1% KMart
7.5% Target
6.2% Macys
6.1% Costco
3.2% Montgomery Ward
2.5% Dillards
1.3% Zellers
1.3% Bloomingdales
0.9% Bon Marche
0.7% Lord & Taylor
0.6% Filene's
0.6% Harrods
0.6% Neiman Marcus
0.6% Hechts
0.5% Value City
0.2% Robinsons-May
That's right: one in every four department store searches was for good old-fashioned Sears, Roebuck.
Generally speaking, it seems to help you online if you've already got a toehold in the paper world of catalogs. Both Sears and JC Penney have well-established (even legendary) mail-order catalogs. Ditto Montomery Ward; considering how their brick-and-mortar stores have faded over the past few decades, 3.2% is a pretty good showing.
Some of the lower-level stores are regional specialties: Filene's is a Boston institution (with a famous bargain basement) while Harrods is a London shopping stalwart. And am I mistaken, or wasn't KMart trying to rename itself "Big K"? We're impressed with their fourth-place showing here, but we couldn't find any searches for "Big K" among the top 200,000 terms.
Zellers, in case you're wondering, is a popular Canadian department store. Sears also seems to be popular in the Great White North: 11% of Sears searches specified "Sears Canada" or "sears.ca." (Yep, there's a catalog version en français.)
For more on the fascinating topic of shopping, may we recommend a visit to our fully-stocked LycoShop? Thank you!
