| Page 2 of 2 < |
Retail's Old Guard Lives
A JCPenney customer makes a purchase at a store in Peabody, Mass. JCPenney and other department-store chains are resurgent.
(By J.b. Reed -- Bloomberg News)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
JCPenney was also the second-most-popular destination for young women when shopping for clothes, with 6.8 percent saying they go there most often. Wal-Mart was in first place with 14.7 percent. Two years ago, Wal-Mart's share was 20.9 percent while JCPenney languished at 4.8 percent.
"This is the voice of the people," said Phil Rist, vice president of strategy for BIGresearch. "This is what they're saying."
If the hypothesis holds true, it could wind up saving department stores. Many specialty stores change with their demographic bases -- meaning there comes a time in a shopper's life when the thumping bass and heavy musk in Abercrombie & Fitch is no longer appealing. The shopper may move on to another retailer, but Abercrombie stays put and waits for a new teenager.
Not so with department stores. They are designed for customers of all ages, starting in the children's department, growing to juniors, and even registering cappuccino makers for wedding presents. If they win over shoppers when they are young, they could keep them for life.
Department stores employ a number of tactics to capture that base. JCPenney recently installed Sephora cosmetics shops in its stores. Popular girl group Danity Kane from MTV's "Making the Band" has been signing autographs at Nordstrom stores around the country.
It's unclear what impact such efforts have had. Several teenagers at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City did not seem won over.
"It seems like department stores are, like, not played out, but focusing more on cosmetics, fragrances, household appliances," 17-year-old Sarah Pollard of Silver Spring said while eating at Taco Bell. "A department store is more like my last resort."
Niemira also wondered how much credit department stores should get for their success and how much should be attributed to a fortuitous combination of external economic factors -- falling gas prices, low unemployment and rising incomes, for example.
The sector may also have benefited from the marketing blitz in September that accompanied the change of several regional department store nameplates to Macy's, he said. Parent company Federated Department Stores Inc. acquired the chains in a merger last year with the former May Department Stores Co., which owned Hecht's, Marshall Field's and Filene's. The conversion could have helped renew interest and drive traffic to all department stores, not just Macy's.
The question is whether department stores can sustain the growth of the past two months or if it is simply an anomaly, a spark that soon will fizzle. Several industry experts were reluctant to forecast beyond the end of the year.
"If history is a guide, it continues at least for three or four months. Yeah, okay, that gets you through the holiday season," Niemira said. "Then what?"
