Sears Buys New Cash Register, Cuts 7,000 Jobs : Retailing: Analysts say the retail giant must do more than cut costs and improve automation if it wants to boost sales.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. said Tuesday that it will cut nearly 7,000 full- and part-time jobs over the next three months as the result of its purchase of a new $60-million computerized cash register system designed to reduce paperwork and streamline its merchandising operations.

About 28,000 electronic cash registers and another 6,000 computerized customer-service kiosks will be installed in Sears’ 868 retail stores throughout the country. Sears said the new equipment will give the mass merchant, the nation’s third-largest retailer, more information about its customers’ purchases and allow its sales force to more easily provide a wider range of services. Installation of the system, Sears said, will save about $50 million per year in employee costs.

However, retail analysts said Sears needs to do more than cut costs and improve its automation if it is ever to rekindle its sagging sales and regain its former position as the nation’s largest retailer. Within the last 18 months, Sears has slipped behind both Wal-Mart and Kmart.

“Sears should be dealing with its customers, not electronics and mechanics,” complained Kurt Barnard, a New York retail analyst and one of the company’s harshest critics. “Sears needs to make its store more friendly to customers so they will buy more. Sears’ competitors already understand this all too well.”

Last week, Sears reported that its December sales at stores open at least a year had dropped 1.8% from the year before, the largest holiday decline among major retailers.

The company said the new cash register system will eliminate about 1,000 full-time non-sales positions and about 5,900 part-time clerical positions by the end of March. A spokesman said almost all of the affected workers would be transferred to other positions within the company, raising the possibility that fewer than 1,000 employees would be laid off. The company could not say how the job cuts would affect each region of the country.

Sears, which employs about 313,000 people full- and part-time, has eliminated 33,000 jobs in the last 18 months in an ongoing effort to cut costs.