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Essentially, they were the victims of themselves. For years and years they would mark up the cost of their clothing and other items, and send out coupons to the

Essentially, they were the victims of themselves. For years and years they would mark up the cost of their clothing and other items, and send out coupons to their members which really just brought the prices back down to what they should have been in the first place. When the new CEO took over, he got rid of these coupons, and instead of marking items up, he just left them at the price they would have been had someone actually brought a coupon. Now you all know how stubborn some older people can be. They want to hunt for a bargain, and not getting that feeling of accomplishment from the feeling of "fictitiously" getting a good deal deterred them from wanting to shop there. They also have begun rolling out mobile payments on iPads/iPhones and many older people think they're not as safe and that someone is stealing their credit card info. Now I happen to prefer the new store in a store concept as you can actually find what you're looking for more easily as the highlighted brands are in plain view with their own little section of the store and all the associated products are near by. Much better than the old, everything mushed together layout. tldr: They tried to cater towards the younger generations, but failed to realize their main customer base is still overwhelmingly the older generation of americans who are set in their ways.

jonny_eh 13y ago
Perfect example of the innovator's dilemma right there. It's not so much that the big incumbents won't innovate, it's that they cannot innovate.
SoftwareMaven 13y ago
Now you all know how stubborn some older people can be. Age (as is so often the case) has nothing to do with it. My brother-in-law is a sales associate there. Even the teens/twenty-somethings he deals with we're mad about the lack of sale prices.
- JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
  You're right, age certainly isn't always the case. I preferred the 'new', old square pricing. If I actually needed something from JCP, I could just go and get it. I didn't have to worry about having to wait for some stupid coupon sale to bring the price down to what it should have been in the first place. But I guess you could counter that with the fact that if everyone knows they can just pick 'x' up at a later time at the low price, they would have no incentive to buy it in a timely manner.
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jrs235 13y ago
By having coupons, it would be easier to schedule fewer cashiers and sales people on the floor and have them focus on stocking etc. When running weekend of weekly sales the stores could temporary increase the number of workers in the store. By taking away the ability to more easily anticipate surges in customers they lost the ability to keep variable employee costs down (without hurting their image and becoming known as a poorly staffed and slow store... "hey I need a tie now! I don't want to wait for a sale. Let's go to JCP. No wait, its going to take forever to get checked out, I'll go pay $5-$10 more from HIGHER END DEPT. STORE and save my frustration.") EDIT: Yes, I realize that if the stores are measuring foot traffic and sales they should still see a pattern however I would be willing to bet that the graph would be flatter with fewer and less drastic highs and lows.

jonny_eh 13y ago

Perfect example of the innovator's dilemma right there. It's not so much that the big incumbents won't innovate, it's that they cannot innovate.

SoftwareMaven 13y ago

Now you all know how stubborn some older people can be. Age (as is so often the case) has nothing to do with it. My brother-in-law is a sales associate there. Even the teens/twenty-somethings he deals with we're mad about the lack of sale prices.

JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
You're right, age certainly isn't always the case. I preferred the 'new', old square pricing. If I actually needed something from JCP, I could just go and get it. I didn't have to worry about having to wait for some stupid coupon sale to bring the price down to what it should have been in the first place. But I guess you could counter that with the fact that if everyone knows they can just pick 'x' up at a later time at the low price, they would have no incentive to buy it in a timely manner.
- deleted 13y ago
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jrs235 13y ago

By having coupons, it would be easier to schedule fewer cashiers and sales people on the floor and have them focus on stocking etc. When running weekend of weekly sales the stores could temporary increase the number of workers in the store. By taking away the ability to more easily anticipate surges in customers they lost the ability to keep variable employee costs down (without hurting their image and becoming known as a poorly staffed and slow store... "hey I need a tie now! I don't want to wait for a sale. Let's go to JCP. No wait, its going to take forever to get checked out, I'll go pay $5-$10 more from HIGHER END DEPT. STORE and save my frustration.") EDIT: Yes, I realize that if the stores are measuring foot traffic and sales they should still see a pattern however I would be willing to bet that the graph would be flatter with fewer and less drastic highs and lows.