Look at the Kohl’s coupon above that a shopper recently posted online. An extra 30% off your purchase! Just as long as you don’t purchase any “premium athletic, premium baby, beauty and fragrance, consumables, select contemporary clothing, premium denim, electrics…” or any other item in sixteen other categories. Brands including Calvin Klein, Carter’s, Columbia, Crocs, Dockers and thirteen others are also out.
Oh, and that laundry list isn’t even exhaustive, since you have to go to Kohl’s website to “find a complete list of exclusions,” because apparently 41 exclusions is all that Kohl’s can fit on the coupon.
“Could have saved everyone a lot of time by just saying what it IS good for,” one frustrated shopper commented.
If you’ve ever been similarly frustrated by a Kohl’s coupon, the retailer is finally listening. In one of his first moves as CEO, Kohl’s new boss is pledging to cut back on the exclusions, so you don’t have to struggle anymore to figure out what a Kohl’s coupon can actually be used for.
“Over the years, our list of excluded brands on our coupon has grown too large with the percent of sales that are excluded from coupons reaching an all-time high in 2024,” CEO Ashley Buchanan told investors yesterday. “This has created confusion and frustration.” After becoming CEO in January, Buchanan examined what was and wasn’t working, and announced yesterday that Kohl’s is “in the process of reversing some of these exclusions to simplify the experience and allow our customers to shop with our promotional coupons more consistently.”
Every year, the list of excluded items on the coupon has gotten longer and longer, with new brands and categories regularly added, to the point that Kohl’s website actually did begin listing inclusions rather than exclusions.
Major brands like Nike and Under Armour are excluded from many retailers’ coupons, so it’s not just Kohl’s. “There’ll always be very large national brands that will always be excluded,” Buchanan said. But many of the exclusions on Kohl’s coupons are just Kohl’s. “There have been many, many brands that didn’t ask to be excluded. We excluded them unilaterally,” Buchanan explained. “You do a little bit every year over the last three to four or five years, and it adds up pretty quickly.”
Kohl’s sales and earnings both slumped last year, so fixing the coupon is just one of the many tasks facing the new boss this year. “When examining recent performance, we have fallen short of fully delivering what our customers want and expect from Kohl’s,” Buchanan said. And fixing it “is going to take some time.”
The turnaround plan also includes prioritizing products, brands and categories that shoppers actually want; making sure high-demand products are in stock; and making shopping at Kohl’s easier, whether in store or online.
With changes that the old regime had made, “we really polarized our core customer,” Chief Financial Officer Jill Timm admitted. “That customer really came to look for value, wanted to use their coupon, wanted the familiarity of brands that we actually took away from them… So we need to move back and build that brand love with them again.”
Kohl’s has also been known to be very lenient and generous in applying coupons to customers’ purchases, accepting them if they’re expired, giving away the discount if a shopper forgot their coupon, or just surprising customers with a coupon when they weren’t even expecting it. “There’s some interesting ways that we operate, and it’s just a legacy way of doing it,” Buchanan said. But that may change. “We tend to give away a lot of markdowns at the register,” Buchanan observed. “The customer comes in, is not asking for that deal, and we tend to give it to them.” That money, he suggested, could be better allocated toward rewarding more loyal customers instead of just giving away discounts to everyone.
For many of those loyal and once-loyal Kohl’s coupon users, reducing the list of exclusions will be a welcome change. “If over half the brands we buy no longer accept these coupons, then that pretty much spells the end of shopping at Kohl’s for our family,” one shopper wrote on Reddit before the change was announced. “With every brand they add to the no-coupon list our safety begins to feel a little more threatened, with how ridiculously angry and hostile some customers get over the coupons,” a Kohl’s employee commented. And if that list of exclusions had gotten any longer, “no point in even having coupons anymore,” another commenter added.
As he works to right the ship, “our goal is to offer quality products at great prices across our entire brand portfolio,” Buchanan said, “so our customers can more clearly see the value they’re getting with their purchase.”
And if customers can more clearly see the fine print that had gotten awfully tiny and lengthy on Kohl’s coupons themselves – that’s a good start.
Image source: Kohl’s / Reddit/shaggyhairjayy
this new kohls ceo also removed all the price scanners from the stores. talk about stupid!