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Couponing Moms No Longer Shop at JCPenney @HuffPostBiz
J.C. Penney’s Sales Plummet: How Couponing Moms Cost The Store $55 Million
Ron Johnson, the new star CEO of J.C. Penney, wishes that couponing fanatics would just listen to him already and stop fussing with those little scraps of paper.
“Coupons were a drug,” said the CEO on Tuesday evening at a conference with analysts. Earlier that day, J.C. Penney announced abysmal results for the first three months of this year, with sales plummeting 18.9 percent at stores open at least a year. Net losses for the period were $55 million. Executives blamed the results on the departure of deal-hunting shoppers after the company changed its pricing strategy in early February to abandon coupons.
“We did not realize how deep some of the customers were into this,” noted COO Michael Kramer about couponing. “We’ve got to wean them off this and educate our consumers.”
Johnson, the wizard behind Apple’s retail stores whom J.C. Penney hired in November, has been working hard to de-frump the company, by adding more fashionable brands, updating stores, redesigning the logo and hiring Ellen DeGeneres as a spokeswoman. Simple, consistently low prices — about 40 percent below what they were before — are key to his new strategy. “People are disgusted with the lack of integrity on pricing,” Johnson declared at a media event in New York in January.
But J’aime Kirlew, a paralegal and mom of three who writes a Jamie Kirlew Couponing blog, was more upset by J.C. Penney’s commercials featuring women shrieking as coupons poured out of their mailboxes that aired in January and February. “This was a super annoying commercial,” said Kirlew. “I’m totally turned off.”
On Tuesday, Johnson was humbled by the earnings news but still confident, admitting that J.C. Penney’s marketing had not been completely effective in communicating the company’s new strategy to customers. In the last three months, foot traffic at stores dropped 6 percent on weekdays and 12 percent on weekends. “It’s going to take time,” he said. The company is now launching a new ad campaign that compels customers to “do the math” on its new prices.
Amber Bustanoby, a self-described “frugal mom” who writes another Coupon Connections blog, says people like her will never abandon coupons because the slips help them make ends meet. “I don’t think it’s a drug,” she said. “For me as a mom, I want to do the best I can with the resources I’m given. We live on one income in a two income world.” Bustanoby, whose family makes about $50,000 a year, says J.C. Penney’s prices didn’t drop enough to get her back into its stores. Bustanoby, like Kirlew, has appeared on TLC’s reality show “Extreme Couponing.”
Read the entire story from Alice Hines of Huffington Post HERE
and feel free to post your comments on her article
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