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Case Analysis: J.C. Penney.

J.C Penney Inc. is an American based holding company with over 850 fifty stores in the

United States and Puerto Rico. The company deals with selling goods and services to consumers

through the company’s departmental stores and e-commerce site. J.C Penney mainly deals with

selling family apparel, home furnishings items and appliances as wells beauty products. Besides,

it offers services like portrait photography, styling salon, and custom decorating and optical in its

department stores (Reuters 2019). Recently the company has not been doing well, especially

after the CEO announced that he will be leaving. However, if the company improves on some of

its positive aspects or changes the negative aspects, it can survive the retail market.

One of the positive aspects of the company that has established its online presence

through establishing an Omni channel retail experience and offering discounts. This is a good

move towards increasing its sales volume, however, with e-commerce giants like Amazon and

Walmart, the competition gets increasing. Customers require more than an online presence and

low prices, they need quality goods at a good price as well as compelling store experiences and

speedy delivery. The one negative aspect that the company can change is employee engagement.

Employee engagement enables them to have a passion for the work they are doing as well as

help them to strengthen their commitment and offer their best performance.

To gain a new competitive advantage, J.C. Penney has to build new and distinctive

strategies. To begin with, the company can apply innovative pricing strategy. Price innovation
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can a source of a company’s competitive advantage yet in most cases it is less explored. Price

innovation introduces new approaches to pricing strategy, pricing tactics as well as pricing

organization to maximize customer satisfaction and profits of the company. Nowadays, most

companies view pricing as a proposition of win/lose between themselves and the customers, but

price innovation breaks this deadlock and illustrates how the company can conjointly make

profits and increase customer satisfaction (Hinterhuber, Andreas, & Stephan, 13).

The other strategy that J.C. Penney can apply in gaining competitive advantage is product

differentiation. Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that aims at distinguishing the

products and services of a given company from those of its competitors. Products that are well

differentiated are well identified and communicate the distinctive qualities of the offerings of a

company. One way of product differentiation is through promotions. If successfully

implemented, product differentiations can create a competitive advantage for the J.C. Penney

Company as well as build brand awareness. Besides, the company can use a defensive strategy to

gain a new competitive advantage (Namada, 96). The merit of this strategy is that it will enable

the company to stay far from its competitors by maintaining the competitive advantage it has

already acquired.

In conclusion, acquiring new strategies to match the environmental trends is crucial in

helping firms to continue in business operations. Competitive advantage strategies are vital for

companies such as J.C. Penney who have in the retail industry for more than 100 years.

Establishing price innovation on the same products and services, product differentiation and

defensive strategy can help the company in acquiring new competitive advantage in retailing

business.       

    
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Works Cited.

Reuters. "JCP - J C Penney Company Inc. Profile | Reuters". Reuters.Com, 2019,

https://www.reuters.com/companies/JCP.

Hinterhuber, Andreas, and Stephan M. Liozu. "Is innovation in pricing your next source of

competitive advantage? 1." Innovation in Pricing. Routledge, 2017. 11-27.

Namada, Juliana Mulaa. "Organizational learning and competitive advantage." Handbook of

Research on Knowledge Management for Contemporary Business Environments. IGI

Global, 2018. 86-104.