Is JC Penney’s Makeover the Future of Retailing? Essay

Is JC Penneys Makeover the emerging of Retailing? Kim Girard, Harvard moving in Week, March 2012 The over a century old retailer JC Penney (JCP) has been losing bank line and customers for a long time. Though it once had a great reputation for value and loyal customers the competition of high volume, low value stores such as Wal-Mart or the higher end stores such as Macys have completely over taken it and threatens to force them out of the market. What can be through with(p) to revive the 110 year old retailer, who is the right person for that task and how will they do it?These questions were addressed in this article. In the article Is JC Penneys Makeover the prox of Retailing, the author (K. Girard) focuses on Ron Johnson, the new CEO of J.C. Penney and his innovations and plans to transform the store. Mr. Johnson comes to JC Penney with an impressive record of success transforming businesses and their retail strategy. He is credited with the transformation of the Target twin e and for leading Apples retail effort with such innovations as the Genius bar.The task faced at JCP is a huge one, the company has been experiencing fall back sales and financial losses of $87 million in the final quarter of last year and a 4.9% overall loss of revenue for the year. Mr. Johnson took the direct of the company in November of 2011. His main task in to reinvent the chain and focus on an all new client base that complicates everyone as his taper market. Of the innovations that he instituted immediately, he focused on set and making them what he termed as fair and square.To do this, he first eliminated sales (he called them diss to the customer), he also eliminated coupons a move a competitor had attempted unsuccessfully about 5 years earlier. An another(prenominal) innovation in pricing was to end all prices in 00 instead of 99 and take away the suggested retail price tag. All of these changes were done to change the perception of the customer, from waiting until an position goes on sale to believing they are paying a fair price all the time.Mr. Johnson also has a vision of overhauling the entire shopping control by adding new brand shops within the store so that the customer can easily find the item they are looking for in what is called a Main Street approach. The plan is to reinvent the displays (letting the designer decide how their product is displayed within the store) and have new brands that speak to different clients. Some of the new brands include Martha Stewart and a budget friendly teen line called Nanette Lepore. Johnson has also changed the store logoand named a new contemporary spokeswoman (Ellen Degeneres) in an effort to create a buzz.There are also plans to create a town square inside each store that could potentially be used to provide customers with favourable services. The transition began in February and he states that his plan will be fully implemented by 2015. In the article, Rajiv Lal, the Stanley Roth, Sr. Profes sor of Retailing at Harvard Business School comments on the probability of Johnsons new idea succeeding. He calls this a very tough task and says that it will not be slowly but that the marketing strategy could work. He agrees with Johnsons 3 to 4 year timeline for implementation and feels that should be enough time to decide if the plan is working. aft(prenominal) reading this article, I took a completely random poll of 5 women in my office ages 26 mid 50s, who all said they had shopped at JCP within the past 6 months. Of the 5 only 1 said she did not like the changes but she also stated that she went to the store for certain brands and example of items that she could no longer find on her last trip but that she would give the store another try based on the opinion of the other 4 women. This article is a perfect example of the type of strategic approach to gaining consumers that this course talks about. It contained examples of concepts like market strategies and targeting parti cular customers.Girard, Kim, (2012, 05 March) Is JC Penneys Makeover the Future of Retailing, Harvard Business Week Retrieved from http//hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6944.html