Kmart Resurrects The BlueLight Special In Stores and Online

Kmart Corp. has launched a major marketing initiative utilizing its legendary BlueLight Specials at its Bluelight.com web site and in the company’s 2,109 stores. First instituted in 1965 as a means to liquidate products at very low prices, BlueLight Specials became one of the most successful and recognized promotions in the history of retailing, until the chain suddenly ceased holding them in 1991. The re-launch of the program in the first two weeks of April will be supported by the largest broadcast, print and in-store marketing expenditure in the discount chain’s history. Flashing blue lights will herald the daily specials that will be conducted without advance notice in "BlueLight Special Zones" that will soon be set up in the center of all Kmart’s stores. At BlueLight.com, the specials will be announced with a flashing logo on the web site’s navigation bar. The specials will offer significant savings on items ranging from microwave ovens to household cleaning products, although shoppers will never know in advance which items are on the BlueLight Special list, a practice long considered one of the keys to the promotion’s consumer appeal. The "attention Kmart shoppers" phrase, now firmly embedded in American pop culture, will be used to announce sales both in stores and online. Even after a ten-year hiatus, Kmart says its BlueLight Special name has retained its appeal, citing surveys that 62% of consumers still recognize the brand name. In a move that was widely seen a marketing masterstroke, Kmart resurrected the BlueLight brand in 1999, when it launched its web site under that banner. The success of the site, one of several that led the bricks-to-clicks counterattack against pioneering dot-com merchants, paved the way for the revitalization of the BlueLight brand throughout the Kmart chain.