Everyday low sales for JCPenney

JCPenney's new "everday low prices" policy—no coupons, no ads covered in fine print, no deceptive "sales"—is off to a bad start: the company posted a loss and its sales have dwindled.

The campaign, which launched on Feb. 1, appears to be a disaster. Revenue dropped 20 percent for the first quarter compared to last year. Customer traffic fell 10 percent. Last year, the company made $64 million in the first quarter; this year, it lost $163 million.
Could we have a moment of silence please for what might be the last heartbeat of honest price tags?
Not only did Penney’s plain pricing structure fail to attract fair-minded shoppers – business reporters wrote with seeming glee during the past few days that it “repelled” them.

Trying to simplify JCPenney's sleazy "bargain hunt" marketing is like trying to simplify the layout of Vegas gambling machines or a no-credit car dealership's newspaper ads. You can't change what makes the dog drool.

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http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol

That’s really too bad. Not being jerked around by sales seems like a wonderfully awesome concept. I can only speculate that people are used to it though, and somehow either think that 1) they’re being ripped off because there isn’t a ‘sale’ or coupon to use or 2) that the store seems cheap now.

Then again, after having worked retail in years past and having read way too much of NotAlwaysRight, I have to admit that most “shoppers” really do seem to love arguing and trying to nickle-and-dime the store out of everything they can. If a store says “no haggling” (which is essentially what this policy does), then those customers will be turned off. Even though they’re paying less to start with, the thought of ‘not being able to save a few more dollars’ is driving them mad.

Mrs. Chloramphenicol used to work for Macy’s, and we’d always joke about how they have a sale every other weekend and the fact that their one-day sales actually ran from Friday through Sunday. Three-day one-day sales FTW?

In closing, I honestly can’t remember the last time I did anything in Penny’s other than walk through it on the way to my destination, but I may have to give them another chance if they’re willing to be this forthright.
glatt1

I really want to support JC Penney, but going to the nearest store requires sitting in heavy traffic for forty five minutes.

Not only do they have honest pricing, but they are inclusive. They have run Father’s Day ads where the family has two dads, and Mother’s Day ads where the family has two moms. They continued using Ellen as their spokesperson even after hateful conservative groups tried to pressure them into dropping her because she’s gay. But it’s not like they are just trying to be the store for same sex couples, they continue to market to more traditional consumers too.

Anyway, I like them, and I want them to do well. I remember when there was a store closer to our home, they had good quality stuff at a fair price, but I won’t sit in traffic to shop.
- edgore
  
  Their online stuff is very good – they are my only reliable source for my ridiculously hard to find 32/38 jeans!
  - glatt1
    
    We still have bath towels we bought from them about 20 years ago. At the time, we shopped around, and they were absolutely the best bath towels we could find, and the cost was right in the middle of what everyone else was charging. Those towels are still pretty plush after all these years. JC Penney is a good store. I was sorry when they closed the two stores close to me.
    - Ramone
      
      We just bought a bed for our new home and the customer service couldn’t have been better. A nice lady named Bettie who reminded me of my mom helped us.
      
      We went back for curtains just this weekend.
- Andy Simmons
  
  Agreed, their more progressive approach toward the types of people portrayed in their ads makes me want to shop there more. But honestly, I can’t remember the last time I went into a JCP store and came out with anything. Their prices and sales tactics aren’t even the issue; it’s the selection of products. I just never find anything I’d actually want to wear in their stores.
- http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol
  
  That’s a shame. If you like them as a company and want them to do well, then you need to be willing to patronize them, otherwise they’ll go out of business.
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  I’ll bet you a donut that if/when they go out of business, and/or JCP has more bad news before November 4, that all their problems will be blamed on hiring Ellen, inclusive marketing etc.
  - elix
    
    I think if we started surfing around the crazy fundie parts of the US-sphere Internet, we’d find people (a la One Million Moms, numbering considerably less than) already blaming all of this on the Ellen situation.
- artbyjcm
  
  Funny, I hadn’t been there in years until about a month ago. There were some damn good sales. I like them now. I hope they don’t go under. I got a really nice jacket for $25.
Ben Harnwell

It would be nice to think that consumers would get the idea that you can shop, get a bargain without a sale but the reality is without a brochure in your letter box (inbox) you forget they exist and forget that the best price is sometimes the one on the shelf…
A similar store in Australia (our Kmart) has done something similar but have kept the weekly brochure – even if it only says the shelf price and not a discount price it seems to be working in our 24 hour store (town of 35,000 with 15,000 in surrounding area)
- invictus
  
  Mass psychology is a tricky thing.
  Would you choose one grocery store over another for a 5% savings?
  
  Now let’s phrase it the way the Kroger chain of stores does in the US: Spend money on groceries at the chain, get gas discounts at Kroger-brand gas stations. $100 in groceries gets you $0.10/gal. off up to 50 gallons. The discount stacks up to a maximum of $1 off for $1,000 of purchased groceries. Oh, and the discount points don’t carry over from month to month: If you spent $100 in May, that $0.10 discount goes poof at the end of June.
  
  So in the absolute best-case scenario? You’re spending $1,000/mo. on groceries, and getting $1/gal. off for a single fill-up. You’re also driving a heavy tractor-trailer truck everywhere, since that’s the only vehicle I’m aware of that can take 50 gallons in a single fill-up. Your total savings are $50 off the $1,000 purchase.
  
  Of course most people don’t buy groceries in precise $100 increments and only have at best a 20 gallon tank. So really, your discount is more like 1-2%. Think you’d choose Kroger over another chain if they’d simply adjusted their prices down by that amount?
  
  I started really thinking about this when I caught myself at the checkout, thinking of what else I might conceivably need because I wanted to spend another $48 and hit that next discount tier before the month ended.
  
  Fuck you, Kroger marketing psychologists.
  - taintofevil
    
    Another fun Kroger trick is that they used yellow tags to indicate sales items, but now use them sometimes for “everyday low price”. That and the constant in-store advertising make me long for a grocery delivery service to come to Knoxville.
    - PinkWithIndignation
      
      Kr0ger is still way better than Wal-Mart. A much more consumer-friendly with it’s simple layout (at Wal-Mart it is hard to go to one side of the store to another in a straight line without using the perimeter) and they are very good at opening up lines, you can always find someone if you have a questions, they put groceries in your cart for you and even help you out to your car if you buy a lot. Plus they are not that much more expensive and have the best food selection in the area. I also like that they don’t have a ton of extra stuff besides food I might be tempted to buy. Sure, they have some, but it’s more like you have to deliberately seek it out to see it. I have never thought about spending more money to get more fuel points, but different strokes for different folks! And that’s why I shop at Kroger. I hope you enjoyed reading this essay as much as I enjoy writing it.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    Bring back S&H Green Stamps.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Yeah, but do you get a rowboat or a sewing machine?
      - bklynchris
        
        I know how old you are………..
  - bcsizemo
    
    All the Kroger stores closed down in my area of NC, but Harris Teeter does some pretty sleight of hand tricks as well.
    
    Their BOGO or B2G3 Free stuff seems like a really hot deal, and sometimes it is pretty good. But most of the time they raise the base price up to compensate enough. So Food Lion might have a BOGO on canned veggies, making them $.66 a can, while at HT you’d end up getting them for $.63 a can…(even though three of them are ‘free”).
    - invictus
      
      “All the Kroger stores closed down in my area of NC, but Harris Teeter does some pretty sleight of hand tricks as well.”
      
      There’s a reason for that. Namely, that Kroger bought Harris Teeter, and eliminated internal competition on a by-state basis. Thus, no Kroger stores in NC; no HT stores in VA (possibly other states too, but those are the two I know of for sure).
      - bcsizemo
        
        Well to according to wikipedia not exactly:
        
        Kroger also swapped all ten of its Greensboro-area stores in 1999 to Matthews-based Harris Teeter for 11 of that company’s stores in central and western Virginia. Kroger still maintains a North Carolina presence in the Raleigh-Durham area. In the Raleigh-Durham area, Kroger closed its North Raleigh store in the Wakefield Commons shopping center on July 9, 2011 because the location failed to meet sales expectations. After the closure, Kroger will operate 16 stores in the Triangle. Kroger had a store in the Greenville from the 1980s until 2010 when it sold it to Harris Teeter.[36] A store in Wilson opened in 2002, but closed two years later.
        
        The few that used to be in the area I live now have been gone for more than a decade if not longer. I suspect they were probably part of the initial expansion of Kroger into NC back in the 80′s. I used to live in Apex, which is right outside Raleigh. There was one there until 2007 or so.
        
        I still keep a Kroger customer card in my wallet just in case I stumble upon one.
  - M Carlson
    
    I refuse to shop at Kroger on a regular basis because in order to get their “super prices”, you have to have a Kroger Card. How ’bout frickin’ giving me, your customer, the best prices you can and not require me to get your stupid card. I need another key tag or card in my wallet like a hole in my head.
    - tacochuck
      
      You can use your phone number in place of the card. You still have the “account” but you don’t need the tag.
      
      Also they are a union shop where I live. I have been seeing many of the same employees at our local Kroger for literally 20 years.
      - http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol
        
        Something tells me it’s not the card that’s the issue as much as it’s the account. The {bonus|members|savings|etc…} club {accounts|cards} exist for one reason and one reason only: to track what you’re buying. Since no one would volunteer to have their purchases tracked otherwise, the ‘sale’ prices were then bolted onto the gimmick so that you can only get the “good” price when you’re tracked. :)
      - invictus
        
        Hey, you could be in Canada, where for years and years the best you were gonna get with a store membership card were air miles — and on only specific products, at that.
      - PinkWithIndignation
        
        @boingboing-82d7316e019b5fbd2889b907e203aa32:disqus So the corporate machine knows how much I like potato chips? How can grocery tracking be incriminating unless maybe an insurance company finds out you buy cigarettes? Or u trollin’?
    - edgore
      
      Solution – area code + 8675309. It almost always works.
    - bcsizemo
      
      Well technically most grocery cards work at most stores…
      
      If you look at the bar code it starts with the number 4 and usually has 9 or 10 numbers after it.
      
      If you have a lazy cashier then just about any card you give them will work…in reality YMMV.
- http://twitter.com/curiositykt curiositykt
  
  They’ve still been sending out emails and flyers. I’ve bought more from them in the past 4 months trying to support this new plan than I have in while. But mostly online as this new system has seemingly screwed up their instore displays as everything is jumbled and a mess and I can’t find anything.
- snowmentality
  
  JCP still does put out a weekly circular highlighting its regular low prices. In fact, it’s much more attractive and eye-catching than the other mall department store circulars — very clean and modern look.
  
  My (completely off-the-cuff) suspicion is that most people who shop at mall department stores do so because they enjoy the bargain-hunting game. They get a sense of accomplishment from waiting for a “big sale” and using a coupon. The ploy of putting a $60 item on sale for $50, then claiming its “regular price” is $200 so it’s 75% off, really does work because it makes people feel like they’ve been very clever to score such a good deal.
  
  If you’re going to a mall, you’re shopping for entertainment, and you are probably entertained by the “thrill of the hunt.” If you just want to buy a shirt at a reasonable price and not mess around, you’re more likely to head to a big-box store like Target or Walmart and not go near the mall. If JCP wants to position themselves this way, Target is their real competition.
  - PinkWithIndignation
    
    Ah, the old “compare to” gimmick.
    http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/12/18/the-meaningless-discount/
bcsizemo

Actually when I heard this I wasn’t surprised at all…

My wife used to shop there more simply because they were sending out these $10 coupons all the time. She could pickup a $20 shirt for $10, now that same shirt is $13… Yeah, it’s only a few dollars, but in her mind it’s like a 20%+ price jack.

I mean look at Kohl’s, everything is like 40-70% off some astronomical price that no one uses. This makes it seem like you are getting a really good deal, when in fact you are still paying a few dollars more than you could get the same product from Target, ect.. Now during holiday times Kohl’s can have some good deals, but everyday they are fair, much like most of the big box stores.

I think it was a valiant attempt at honest marketing, but I think applying that to clothing is a bit much all at once. I think the Sephora in our JCP is what keeps the people coming in more than the pricing.
- James B
  
  Same here. My wife did the same thing: a $10 coupon got here in the door, and absent those, I don’t think she has been back. We sold our JCP stock right after they opened all those new stores about six years ago. They seem flexible enough to ditch this strategy, and do something that works. Sounds like a good time to buy more.
msbpodcast

The problem with advertising is that when its necessary, is really is necessary.

As the economy contracts, as our wallets become welded shut, competition is now for the hardest thing, that rarest of commodity, our attention.
http://www.facebook.com/chengjih Cheng-Jih Chen

So they’ve basically adopted Wal-Mart’s pricing/coupon/sales policy, but with a Macy’s-style cost structure and clientele, thereby getting into a worst-of-both-worlds position.
blueelm

They have the best opaque tights. Hands down. If it takes bizarre psychological games to keep me in winter tights, then please JC Penney, keep messing with my head. The ones from Nordstroms cost twice as much and get holes within a month.
jaytkay

Aldi/Trader Joe’s seems to do OK with the same-prices-all-the-time strategy.

Of course groceries are different, we all have to buy food frequently, but maybe there is something to be learned there.
- asterios9
  
  It has to be a class thing. Now that I’m an adult who makes more money than I ever expected to, I can rarely be bothered to read sales circulars and clip coupons. For certain things (food & clothes) I just want exactly what JCP was offering – knowledge that I can pop in whenever I get around to it and get what I want, and not get gouged for it.
  
  So anyway, I also buy groceries at a vaguely upscale/gourmet place that hardly runs sales, but keeps prices on good stuff that would normally be “specialty items” reasonable. (Fairway Market in NYC.)
  
  But when I was a student, man, sales and coupons were where it was at. You felt like you were earning money by wasting your time combing through the flyers and strategizing.
  - bklynchris
    
    They have won, they have brought you over to the other side with their insidious marketing techniques, brerrabbit (which I first read as Barrabas) is rubbing his hands together gleefully when he read your comment.
    
    Sadly, the woman in front of you in the aisle with the aged balsamic vinegar and Frankie’s olive oil in her cart? Um yeah, that would be me. However, I do belong to the Park Slope Food Coop so when I shop at Fairway I do it with impunity and probably break even with what I would have spent at the Coop anyway bc of FW sales and not coop EDLP.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    If you go grocery shopping regularly, you should have some idea what normal prices are. If the asparagus is $1.99 ON SALE! when it was $1.49 not on sale last week, buy the broccoli instead.
    - asterios9
      
      Basically my point was that, since I’ve got a decent amount of money, I’ll buy the asparagus no matter what. It’s just two bucks, and ultimately all I want is a convenient place to buy it (as well as some lemon and domestic parmesan to dress it with.) I can’t remember the last time I adjusted my dinner plan because of price. (Maybe I’ll sub out a cheaper fish if the one I had in mind is very expensive, that’s about it.)
      
      But I’ll avoid a store where prices boomerang up and down stupidly, or that gouges me on anything that is supposedly “gourmet” (like, say, a box of polenta), because I still care a little bit.
      
      This is why EDLP at my upscale grocery buys my loyalty. I’m pretty confident they aren’t screwing me, and beyond that I don’t need to think about it at all.
    - Ito Kagehisa
      
      All I can remember is that it’s time to buy grapes when they hit 99 cents a pound. The rest of it never seems to stick, unfortunately.
brerrabbit23

EDLP is a hard stance to take, particularly when you don’t have the marketing spend required to retool your entire value proposition and you don’t have shareholders willing to endure the sales dip that will invariably result as your customers reselect.

It may feel more honest (as Rob so thoughtfully points out) to simply mark things the price that they *are at the till*, but you’ve then signed yourself up to a different audience than the one that you had.

Protip: The audience that can do math and recognizes a sale for what it is is the smaller, less frequently spending one.
- bklynchris
  
  Re your protip- Indeed! This is a goal I seek to achieve with the vicious tenacity of that skill level set by my mother and MIL.
billstreeter

Curious, this was the initiative of their new CEO Ron Johnson, who is the former VP of retail for Apple and was the guy Jobs hand picked to help create the Apple store.
- Ramone
  
  Yeah, but with different business models it’s not really and apples to Apple comparison.
  - billstreeter
    
    I wasn’t comparing them, just pointing out where he came from.
- brerrabbit23
  
  what’s curious about an Apple exec not understanding value-focused customers?
  - billstreeter
    
    That’s not the observation I was making, but thanks for trying to read something into it that wasn’t there. I was just pointing out who the new CEO was and where he came from. The curious part is in reference to the fact that honest pricing seems to be failing so spectacularly.
    - brerrabbit23
      
      I realize it wasn’t the observation you were making. It’s the observation I was making.
      
      EDLP failing spectacularly isn’t curious to a marketing exec, and I am one.Apologies for whatever offense you’ve chosen.
      - bklynchris
        
        ??
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    I think Apple does understand value, they’re great at providing it; what they’re not specialised in is false-economy products or aggressive pricing strategies.
    
    I appreciate that there’s a difference in context and meaning when describing ‘value-led’ and ‘good value’, but still.
    - brerrabbit23
      
      I’m not suggesting that Apple’s wares aren’t “of value”, I’m using value in the marketing-centric context, as this is a discussion about market psychology.
      
      Value, in a marketer’s parlance, is a polite way of saying “as cheap as possible, while retaining all the most desired functions.”
      
      Apple doesn’t fit that model. The delta between the demographic that Apple seeks and the one that JCP endures is important, in context, because JCP is now burdened with an executive who has demonstrated his inability to parse between them himself.
      
      I’m uncertain what you’re suggesting by “false-economy”.
      
      I’m also uncertain why you’d take time to comment, given that you’ve attested to seeing the difference on your own, unless you simply enjoy typing?
Preston Sturges

That kind of retail operation has tremendous seasonal turnover of merchandise. They need to have seasonal clearance sales to get rid of the old stuff, and it must either be sold to customers or sold off at a loss.
SomeGuyNamedMark

Sadly it seems the marketing psychologists know us better than we know ourselves.
http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro

This is bad news for those that love comfortable, beige slacks.
http://twitter.com/philgaulrapp philgaulrapp

My whole problem with JCPenney is the dishonesty of the whole thing.

First they say no more sales, everything is 40% off, etc. But after just a few weeks, they started having “best price Friday”, which sounds suspiciously like the “Our biggest sale of the year” weekends that they were having Every Other Weekend.

It’s shady and misleading, and I will not shop there anymore.
- bklynchris
  
  Not that I don’t agree with you, but doesn’t everybody do this? Or is it bc they said they wouldn’t and then they did? Or they never should have said they wouldn’t?
  
  I just feel a little guilty that they totally dropped from my consumption radar. I can’t help but wonder if the loss of the JCP shopper could possibly have to do with the upward mobility of their core shopper base from the 1970′s.
  
  ie-My parents shopped there, I have a larger disposable income than they did and my $ is sucked up by the barf in my mouth a little retail outlets like Crate and Barrel or J Crew, as well as boutique catalogs (Garnet Hill or Pottery Barn).
  
  If so, then the people meant to move up and replace my generation of shoppers may have gotten sucked up by WalMart. Which indicates growing economic disparity. Or I am just high….
  - brerrabbit23
    
    You aren’t high.
    
    Or at least, you aren’t so high as to not correctly recognize generational demographic splits. So… you’re either sober enough, or you’re what we call a “loadie pro”.
    
    Their core demographic values ‘straight talk’ but doesn’t understand that it responds most enthusiastically to things that are anything but.
    
    That’s a psych conflict they could’ve readily anticipated…
http://alessar.livejournal.com/ Alessar

They are sending out monthly ads that are like glossy catalogs. They remind me a lot of Target ads in styles and graphics though, and I think they have a former Target person heading up the effort. As other people have commented even though you can get a good, reasonable price all the time, for bargain hunters it’s a few dollars more on some items and seems like a price increase. Plus, isn’t it a bit more fun to think you’re “beating the house” and scoring a great deal? I think they may need to hybridize their strategy and have quite a lot of never on sale EDLP items, probably staple items, and then have “fun sales” on more annual/seasonal items.
http://www.commodorecrush.com/ Commodore Crush

I like JCP too and thought they had a great idea with their pricing. I used to get way too many mailers that I’d just toss in the can.

Question though… Ikea kind of does this too, don’t they? I mean, they may have only 1 or 2 sales all year, but most of the time nothing is marked down. How is it they stay successful? Besides the maze that traps in their customers that is.
- bcsizemo
  
  Different market. How many other places off your so much stuff for your house so cheap? Now compare whatever number you have to the number of places to get clothes…it is probably 3 times high, 4 or 5 maybe. Just a whole lot more competition in the clothing market vs. home goods.
  
  Besides I think most customers know there is a large markup in the clothing industry. So if that $20 blouse is on sale at 50% off the store is still making money on it. Most furniture places won’t be turning much if any profit at 50% off savings (unless they work like Kohls).
- penguinchris
  
  Ikea is successful because their stuff is good. Good quality and great design (not the best quality or the best design, but easily the best of both when the compromise of low price is included). Also, unlike with a clothing store it’s less of an impulse shopping sort of place (though they have plenty of impulse-worthy stuff, don’t get me wrong).
  
  JC Penney’s stuff just isn’t very good compared to the alternative. Some of the comments here suggest that they have a few products that some people really like – so there probably is a certain percentage of the population who really likes what’s there (or specific items anyway) and will continue to shop there.
  
  But they’ve done nothing to expand their market. The only thing that’s changed so far is the pricing. If you don’t have anything people besides your current customers want, you won’t get new customers. That doesn’t explain their drop in sales, of course, but it could just be that other stores have been stepping up their offerings so they would have lost customers either way.
  
  One of the most influential people in menswear trends today, Nick Wooster, signed on as some sort of creative director at JC Penney’s recently. If this guy is actually put in charge of selecting what clothing is available, they have the ability to far surpass their competitors (which currently is probably mostly Target and other downscale department stores like Sears).
  
  They could be a serious competitor not only to Macy’s, but even more upscale department stores like Nordstrom. It remains to be seen how much of an influence Wooster will have though. Based on what I’ve seen in their stores, 3/4 or more of the current men’s clothing and shoes will need to disappear and be replaced by something decent in order to catch my interest.
  - http://www.commodorecrush.com/ Commodore Crush
    
    I agree with the clothing selection. It kinda stinks for men. It doesn’t need to be designer clothing, but something with a little more style and a lot less dad or teen clothing.
LikesTurtles

JCPenney is 110 years old. Seems silly for them to think they can change the way consumers think of them in a single quarter. Personally I rarely shop there because it’s a mall store and I hate pretty much everything about malls. So JCPenney simply never enters my mind when it comes to shopping. The only thing I’ve bought from them in the past decade are curtains, which I bought from the website. I’m open to shopping there but they’re going to have to spend time to convince me and other consumers that they have indeed changed to something better.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

Whole Foods also advertises ‘everyday low prices’, but for them that seems to be just something to put on a sticker. For some reason, they don’t just write “Hey! Look! The product closest to this eye-catching label is the same price it always is!”

The idea of ‘honest price tags’ is a good one, but I think it’s already been subverted to exploit our Pavlovian response to Amazing! Sale! Prices! Now!
- PaulDavisTheFirst
  
  whole foods does actually do coupons, but AFAIK they are only distributed/available in-store. The savings are good but seem to mostly be a way to get consumers to try new products.
http://twitter.com/laurenfaith Just Lauren

Maybe they should fix their website. honestly i wanted to buy several things online but their website did not reflect accurate inventory & everything i wanted was out of stock. the experience was so irritating i gave up on them. i hope jcpenney is reading this because perhaps it’s not the honest price tag reverse-psychology issue that’s solely to blame.
http://twitter.com/hoydenhere Hoyden Here

If I remember correctly, Eaton’s in Canada tried this same approach in the late 90s with the same results, shortly before they tanked.
http://www.facebook.com/charles.lenchner Charles Lenchner

I’m committing to buying crap online from JCP. I want this experiment to work!
anharmyenone

Started shopping there recently on the advice of a friend and liked it. The sales people are happy to help, but will leave me alone if I don’t need them.
Ito Kagehisa

Perhaps it’s because nobody knows about it. You can’t sell stuff nobody knows about.
nvlady

Its a shame. I would love this concept to work. I *hate* sales because they always make the check out line too long because someone is reading their coupon wrong and mad they didn’t get the ‘discount’.

I rarely shop sales. I rarely use coupons. I factor time vs money and right now my time is worth more than spending 30 minutes saving $1.
http://bjunity.org/ Bill B

“Best Price Friday”?

That explains why I was there recently and bought some items I thought were a good price anyway, and was pleasantly surprised when they rang up for several dollars less at the register.

There were no signs indicating a reduced price.
SamSam

People assume that

1) The base price has been under market pressure, and that if the base price for a similar good is higher in one place than another, then the quality is most likely better, (because otherwise why would anyone buy at the higher price?), and
2) Sales are discounts on the base price, and the seller is losing some of their profit.

Under these two (false) assumptions, which looks the more attractive offer:

A) A generic shirt for $20
B) A generic shirt for $30, marked down to $20.

Within the same store, with basically the same shirt, the vast majority of people will pick B. This because with the base price being $30, you assume that the shirt must be of higher quality. And you’re getting it for a steal!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The more compelling concept is that people will choose the shirt marked down from $30 to $25 rather than the same shirt priced at $20 with no SALE tag.
tacochuck

For me their Stafford under garments and Gold Toe socks are the only items I can wear. I have tried at least 5 or 6 other brands of those items and none are as good to me as the JCP items. None fit as well and none last as long.

They recently seemed to have switched to a new branding scheme “Stafford Essentials” and I am not sure they are the same quality as the previous incarnations of Stafford items, but we shall see.

Please don’t go out of business JCP, no other tighty whiteies fit me as well!
http://www.misscellania.com/ MissCellania

JC Penney is about the most high-end store in my tiny town, so bear with me. It is also the only store that sells Levis for miles and miles around. I bought Levis jeans there for many years, always priced at $40-$45 and on sale for $20 off or so. You could count on it. Yesterday, I bought my first new pair of jeans in a year, and had to pay every penny of that $45. Oh yes, I’ve monitored them for months to see if jeans would ever be on sale again. It’s pretty hard to convince me they’ve lowered any prices at all.
EH

This story seems to be an instance of short-term thinking. Should they really be held to account in 3months for a new sales strategy? Personally, I just bought a JCP lamp two weeks ago without being aware of this strategy of theirs, and I hadn’t been to a JCP in years.
- http://profiles.google.com/carboncow robert feller
  
  sadly since we live quarter to quarter in this county due to wall street…yes, we must thing short term. America fails with modern capitalism do to the fact it has to answer to shareholders and analysts who live and die by the quarter earnings…
Eddie Perkins

Honest to god, the reason I haven’t shopped there since their revamp is the whole “JCP” thing. Companies reducing their names to initials is played out and obnoxious.

Sorry, but you are J. C. Penney’s. You will always be J. C. Penney’s, at least until you unfortunately go the way Montgomery Ward’s and Mervyns.
http://profiles.google.com/carboncow robert feller

I cannot stand sales, coupons, discounts…they make me crazy. My wife is completely fine to pay to much for something simply because they give her a coupon…she never price shops and the coupon/sale works for her. She brings home junk she doesn’t even want/need…because it was on sale : (