Professor Elam

4 responses to “Will Ron Johnson Destroy JC Penny?”

1. 

   Evonne Soto

   October 15, 2012

   I completely agree with the article & your statement. JCP had more people walking in their stores when they were handing out coupons like crazy but ever since the “makeover” I’ve noticed few mentions of their name. I can understand that Ron Johnson is trying to reinvent the company, but I personally was satisfied with the “old” JCP. I’ll admit I rarely shopped there, but when I did it was usually because they mailed a $10 coupon off a $15 purchase, which was too good to pass up. Now JCP seems too much of a Macy’s wannabe, which really unoriginal and unattractive. Although Johnson has had great successes in the past, one must scrutinize all the possibilities with his plan. He’s been successful with the upscale retail, but will he really understand the lower middle class thinking? Is that a risk that the 110-year old retailer should be taking in the current economic state? I would have been asking myself these questions before investing. Johnson seems to be targeting the upper middle class (and missing) but crushing the lower middle class, which has been the backbone of JCP. And how can one ignore the online purchasing, that is the future and in actually the present because more and more purchasing is being done online. And as you stated Johnson doesn’t have anything at state, so if JCP goes under, he’s lost nothing. One quick way to get Johnson to change the game plan (since it obviously isn’t working) is to make part of his payment in JCP shares, and then he’ll have something at risk.

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2. 

   Dennis Elam

   October 15, 2012

   Evonne
   my compliments on a well written post, it takes decades to build a JCP but only a few quarters to fritter it away, as we are seeing at Sears where a hedge fund manager Lampert thinks you can run retail but re purchasing shares of the company.

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3. 

   Solomon Ybarra

   October 15, 2012

   I understand how the author states that he shouldn’t treat JC Penny’s the way he did, JCP is not where you shop to can get your name brand clothes. i know what he means when he says JCP is discount department store where they have offered their customers good clothes and household items, but not extravagant and over priced like at Macy’s. And since clothes already cost too much, a church going man will not want to deal with his children acting like some fools over $70 dollar jeans. I know I would take those kids straight to Wal-Mart, even though I ain’t got any kids. So just like the author is forecasting JC Penny’s will lose their valued customer trying to compete with chains that are already established in high end retail market. Plus I can’t believe there isn’t any internet activity going on at JC Penny’s, everything is online and they should be too. It just too bad 10,000 people will be losing their jobs because this guy wanted to reshape a legend in the game.

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4. 

   Ruben Medrano, Sr.

   October 17, 2012

   So have you received your $10 off purchase of $20 yet? My wife recived hers. It was Mr. Johnsons idea to send that one out.

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