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.

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.

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.

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. 

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).

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!

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.

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?

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!

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. 

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.