-—Their niche was “good quality at reasonable prices for middle-class shoppers”. JCP cannot compete against WalMart on price.——
True, and even if they could, it takes years to develop that reputation.
OTOH, I do almost all of my dept. store shopping at Target. I don’t have time to fart around with coupons and sales flyers.
I wonder whether it was the homo thing or the dropping of sales that cost them, since I don’t know how much publicity the homo thing received. I guess it could be both.
Nice going though. I could have been the CEO, done nothing, and saved them quite,a bit of dough.
As an aside, I heard that Staples sales are flat. As a business customer, I’m bombarded with email sales, coupons, and reward programs.
I don’t know either. I have never shopped at Penney’s, for no particular reason but when they started those new commercials, I didn’t get them. I looked up their supposed new policy and it just sounded like a bunch of double speak.
All I’ve ever learned about retail is that there are a certain percentage of the people who have to have the “new” things first, no matter the cost. Then the discriminating, who are waiting for a lower price and then the cheap ones who will wait for steep discounts.
I know people who plan all their shopping by the sales and would never buy anything not on sale.
I had another thought, the reason Kmart has gone steadily downhill is that they have great sales prices in their brochure but they never have the sale merchandise when you get there and they still haven’t figured that out.
You have to get people into the store and then hope they’ll see things they just can’t live without that aren’t on sale.