J. C. Penney Company Executive Summary

According to SNHU (2016), Michael Porter describes cost leadership, differentiation, or focus on a target market that ranges from narrow to broad are the generic strategies a company can pursue. A company can add unique values and differentiate from its competitor, or lower its production cost and passes on the savings to its customers or focus different market depending on its core competence to its own advantages while planning and designing a strategy. The factors that differentiate one competitive strategy from another depends, if the company follows a competitive advantage linking to lower cost or targeting a broad or narrow market. Two types of competition lower cost and differentiation, two types of the target market broad and narrow provided total 4 competitive strategies and the 5th the best-cost provider strategy is a blend of all the four (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, and Strickland, 2016).

C. Penney Company, Inc. is an apparel and home furnishing retailers, is dedicated with unparalleled style, quality and value and a broad assortment of national, private and exclusive brands to fit all shapes, sizes, occasions and budgets. J.C. Penney was losing money and considered Ron Johnson the company’s best hope for a successful turnaround with is a success with Target and Apple, but its store sales nosedived by 31.7% in the fourth quarter of 2012 versus the prior year. The strategy of high prices to allow for discounting to protect gross margin worked in the past for J. C. Penney Company and the customer expects the sale and the coupons. The risk is that any sticker shock price will keep the customer away. The store within store and services to add a new range of service and the product failed to attract new customers as well. Ending the fake price in its store strategy failed miserably to resound with J.C. Penney’s sales-hunting, coupon-loving core customers (Mohammed,