A year ago, I cut up the card, not interested in someone who is not interested in us..
When we got married in 1972, our first credit card was JC Penney. Our quarters were stocked from that retailer for years. They sold us the basics with no frills. Now they are selling foo foo stuff at high prices. Too bad they lost track of the core American market.
That reminds me of a story one of my co-workers told me about his home town in Alabama. The quick version goes like this:
A entrepreneur gets the idea to sell reasonably priced plain furniture to the townsfolk. He does well, actually he does very well and before he dies has five stores scattered around the state. His business model is successful.
His two daughters take over the business upon his death, now these two Southern belles have been raised in near opulence and have always had the best that Daddy’s money could buy. So what do they do?
Well not knowing the clientele of the stores their Father built up from nothing they change the furnishings from those “plain and tacky’ furnishings to the sort of things they have always had in their own homes.
Bottom line; in less than five years their stores have all gone out of business. And all because they didn’t know or understand their customer base.
The same thing will happen to J.C. Penny and Target, et al. Their customer base is or at least ‘was’ families with children.