Question

One of the victims of the COVID-19 crisis is the Neiman Marcus brand of department stores. They simply could not survive the crisis. Debt may have contributed but there are other reasons why Neiman Marcus hit rock bottom.Do some research on the stores, the prices, the offerings and the services they offer. Did they have the characteristics
that were selected in by this environment? What characteristics were strong points? What characteristics were weak points? Is it too late for Neiman Marcus? Can they change their characteristics to be more isomorphic with their environment? In the middle of the COVID-19 crisis Neiman Marcus sent an email touting their sale on women's high-fashion dresses. The 40% off took some $5000 dress down to $3000. Is this a smart move? Does this show that they are out of touch?

Answer 1

Due to this COVID situation, Many stores had run out of business and many of them are still in losses. There are companies which closed many of their stores due to this worst market conditions. Few businesses went out of operations completely and closed their branches permanently. There are many factors that impacted this kind of effect. We could say that this is mainly due to the decrease in demand for the products and economic conditions of the people.

Neiman Marcus and another such type of stores offered many offers to increase the sale of goods even at decreased prices. They just wanted to sell the stocks which are still in their stores to close the stores and move out of operations in those particular areas. In this worst-case scenario, we have many offers coming up and we never predicted such type of economic surge. This is a really difficult time and at the same time stocks have to be cleared. We never expected such types of natural disasters In fact we did not even have time to predict this kind f lockdown of the markets. Even e-commerce industries have gone out of operations due to the increased risks of operations.

Neiman Marcus should have started this in the initial stage and could have offered in the initial stage. Even though they are offering now most of them don't have the money for luxuries during these times. Most of them have lost their jobs and they are struggling in big time for the food and shelter in many parts of the world. And even now we don't have an estimated time for getting this situation in control. This Pandemic is spreading in an exponential way and has risk for the economies of many countries.

Even though this company offering discounts in big-time we could say that people will not be interested in purchasing dress materials worth $3000. Because this amount can be used for food and shelter. We could say even offering this kind of discounts will not help to sale the products as expected.