Explain why Sears or Walmart cannot effectively create a trendy counterculture image

My answer to this is that if you go counterculture, this means you are going against culture. If you go against culture you challenge the culture's beliefs in one way or another. The public can be unforgiving when they are offended, and will many times choose to shop somewhere else if they have a choice when a company does something offensive to their beliefs. Stores like Walmart, Sears, and Costco's structure and business model is to appeal to the masses. So for this reason, alienating any group is not in their business's best interests. They have too much at stake.

Businesses that can afford to create a trendy counterculture image usually are smaller and can cater to a micrographic and do well with it. They can grow and create a larger business model, but it's much harder to do. Whole Foods seems to come to mind as a company who has successfully done this.

A creation of a counterculture by Sears or Wal-Mart chain stores may not succeed because of various reasons that play a role in the marketing tactics used by Urban-outfitters Incorporation. Urban-Outfitters Incorporation uses niche marketing and exclusivity as its main marketing tactics.
Wal-Mart and Sears are large scale American departmental stores situated all over American cities and even outside of America. Unlike Wal-Mart and Sears Urban-Outfitters is exclusively and discretely positioned and targeted on to a small niche. It uses this strategy to ensure its goods are scarce to the general population but exclusively available to certain areas that the intended niche’s population can reach. The created scarcity and resultant demand increases its popularity demand in the niche (Dalgic, 2006). Sears and Wal-Mart may never accurately target a narrow niche such as the niche held by Urban-Outfitters. This is because their stores are wide-spread and not specifically located for any niche in particular. Thus, they cannot accurately narrow to a market niche and create exclusivity-which are the two key competencies applied by Urban-Outfitters.
Another reason would be that their wide-spread nature cannot make their fashions distinctive and peculiar. This is because their scale of operation and the large networks that these companies own will make their goods available to many people. Therefore, their goods will be ubiquitous and in the end lose distinctiveness which is an element those consumers in Urban-Outfitters desire.
Additionally, the creation of a counterculture to counter Urban-Outfitters market effect would actually be tantamount to duplicating Urban-outfitters work. This is because these two companies will have to narrow down the operations to the niche occupied by Urban-Outfitters. Considering the fact that tastes and preferences in this niche are almost similar due to its narrowed nature; these companies may have to produce products similar to Urban-Outfitters’ line of products. Thus their created image may never be a counterculture but a duplication of Urban-Outfitters line of products.

I don't know about sears because I don't really go there, but I love Walmart! It is my hood I swear! They have really good stuff too ( good sales also )