J. C. Penny was a proud departmental store in the early 2000s with thousands of locations nationwide. Penny was a place where people not only came for a one stop shop but also came to enjoy and have fun. It was a mini getaway for the folks and their families to escape from all their responsibilities for few hours. However, it all changed when other competitors started opening stores like J.C. Penny. People slowly started to drift away from the penny stores and slowly made their way in to stores such as Kohls and Macys that were brand new and offered a different kind of environment for people who were used to shopping at the Penny.
Since its beginnings as a one-room store appealing to working class families, J. C. Penny has had many ups and downs, high corporate management turnover, and company restructuring. JCP went public just before the Great Depression and despite this, the company prospered and reached sales exceeding $3B about 10 years after the Great Depression. The stores were constantly changing with consumer trends as shown by the launch of its catalog service and customer credit cards. Led by high-profile executives, the restructuring efforts fared well for the company’s sales, however, high turnover of these managers proved challenging and there was little sense of unity or identity within the company.
In order to influence the consumers that enter the store, the J.C. Penney location in Vero Beach, Florida, employs in-store techniques common in all department
Based on the Threat of New Entrants completive forces J. C. Penney implemented lowering their prices by 40 percent. By doing this Penney is trying to discourage others that department stores from opening. Based on the bargaining power of supplies, Penney decided to reduce the number of private label products and only have a few key products. By doing this Penney is reducing the number of suppliers they must have contact with. Based on the bargaining power of buyers Penney will have select products on sale for a month.
Costco Wholesale Corporation strives to grow and expand through their competitive retail and pricing strategies in their market. As a retail firm, Costco depends on cusumer purchasing capacities (Gregory 2015). Costco offers a limited number of items that are afforadable quality services and goods to their consumers and believes it aids to their continued growing and expanding success. Costco is driven by cost leadership for their retailer store because they would rather maintain the lowest prices possible which enable customers to return. Costco largely relies on their pricing and retail strategy to continue sales and organization success.
Based on Michael Porter’s discussion of the characteristics of an effective strategy, J.C. Penney has an effective strategy for growth. However, there are areas in the growth and development plan that should be reconsidered. The first characteristic of Porter 's plan is the cost-leadership strategy. The basis of this format is to keep the cost below those in the competitive market. J.C. Penney is adapting to this change by offering twice a month sales as well as keeping merchandise at least forty percent below retail value in efforts to gain back their customers.
J. C. Penney, a Fortune 500 retail store, provides a variety of brands, catering to diverse customers’ specific income, size, and
In the article titled “J.C. Penney Is Changing Its Competitive Strategy” (Kinicki & Williams, 2013), Ron Johnson; who is the newly appointed chief executive officer for J. C. Penney, is astonished to find that most of the consumer sales that are rung up throughout the store is due mostly in part to the company offering their merchandise at a fifty percent or more discount to customers, and the customers are only purchasing these discounted items roughly four times a year on average. This makes Mr. Johnson rethink his strategy and plans to turn the company around by getting consumers back into the stores with name brand deals and more noticeable displays of these items at more affordable prices. Even though it is an uncertain plan that could
The J.C. Penney company is one of the largest retail stores in America selling a variety of products. It was founded by James Cash Penney who believed that a store should be ran completely on honesty and deep respect for the customer (J.C. Penney 1875-1971). J.C. Penney turned an idea and a dream into one of the most successful stores in America. He did so even though he was born in to a relatively poor family.
(Douglass, 2013, para. 9). Today, J.C. Penney continues to struggle. Tremendous revenue loss, employee layoffs, and store closings continues to beleaguer the once department store
By doing so he wanted to have more control therefore the type of hierarchy culture is also applied to J.C. Penney under his leadership (Kreitner, 2013,
Weakness J.C. Penny only focus on their business in the U.S. so far, it doesn't have any plan to expand their business to be global in the emerging economies of the world. And this is a limitation of developing the company also it doesn't present its brand in the emerging market under the growing economies as well. Another disadvantage of J.C. Penney is their businesses management. Because of its variety, it has the consistent product recalls. J.C. Penny has over 10,600 employees and many different kinds of products, it's hard to manage the process and guaranteed that each product has high quality at same
That is a big assumption because he had no evidence, it was just what a small group of people (most of them had just joined JC Penney) that believed in the idea and where sure customer will love it. I don’t disagree with the fact that customer would love it, the question is, would JC Penney’s customers love the strategy. They had no evidence, because Johnson refused to do any type of testing on customer he knew nothing about and based on untested assumptions.
This paper utilized the secondary data (i.e. organizational records). In this regard, J. C. Penney’s annual reports, last ten years sales and profitability data as well as financial statements for last five years were downloaded from the Morningstar. Accounting ratios were computed based on the last five years financial statements. While financial projections were estimated on the basis of previous five year average growth and costs derived from common size income statement. While projecting the next three years, the financial forecasting method was applied which was based on current goals and priorities.
Victoria Secret was profitable enough in their first year, for the company to open four more physical locations, as well as a mail order catalogue. Although Roy Raymond’s policy was initially profitable, but as we will discuss in the later parts of this paper, it also had its downsides that almost led to the bankruptcy of Victoria Secret. Today, Victoria Secret is a multi billion dollar conglomerate with more than a thousand stores in more than 180 countries generating an annual income of over five billion. 2. PESTEL ANALYSIS The external environment of a company can affect everything from company policies, finances, sales, targeted customers and can be a deciding factor in whether the company remains for another season.
