Ron Johnson Case Study Essay
It seems to me that Ron Johnson, former CEO of J.C. Penney’s had a clear goal of lowering prices and slowing down the never ending sales. I think he had hopes of making the customers realize he was trying to change in order to give fair prices. I can not help but wonder, could it be the lack of extreme sales, discounts or coupons that made customers reject his bright ideas? Maybe some people liked going shopping at a huge clearance sale.
Whatever the reason is, I am now going to concentrate on possible failures in relation to the three core processes of business that Ron Johnson did not adhere to and would have helped him to be more successful as the CEO of J.C. Penney’s.
After I read an article from Reingold, Jones, and Kramer ( 2014) …show more content…
I felt that Johnson went into Penney’s and tried to literally change everything about the store and its products. Hr tried to change the actual stores, the logo, the prices, the sales, etc. He just did not do the most important thing, I think, should have been to ask the customers, what do they want? People, in relation to a core process of business, he did not listen to them. He did not think about the customers that Penney’s already had. His strategy involved adding separate boutiques within the actual department store and cutting back prices.
Research by Reingold, Jones, and Kramer (2014) suggests that there would be only three prices for the things that were sold.
It would be the original price (much lower than before), a month long special value price for some items, and a twice monthly extra special price for things they needed to just get rid of (which seems like clearance to me, personally). It seemed that he was trying to make the store seem as if it is just an honest, fair place to make a purchase. He did all of this with dismissing testing and consumer research. He went ahead with a crazy plan and it failed. His strategy may have worked for other products but it could not work for this store that was already established even though it was suffering. If I had to recommend a suggestion to the way that he carried out his time with J.C.Penney, I would start by trying to find out what do the customers want. What ages of people are attracted to that store? I would not have shifted the way the price policy was done by Johnson. I would also empower the employees and also the managers because they knew who the customers were. I would get together a team to help build off of what could be found out or researched. It seems that Johnson perhaps skipped all of the three core processes of business and just wanted to create an entire new
store.
References:
REINGOLD, J., Jones, M., & Kramer, S. (2014). How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying. Fortune, 169(5), 80.
Whatever the reason is, I am now going to concentrate on possible failures in relation to the three core processes of business that Ron Johnson did not adhere to and would have helped him to be more successful as the CEO of J.C. Penney’s.
After I read an article from Reingold, Jones, and Kramer ( 2014) …show more content…
I felt that Johnson went into Penney’s and tried to literally change everything about the store and its products. Hr tried to change the actual stores, the logo, the prices, the sales, etc. He just did not do the most important thing, I think, should have been to ask the customers, what do they want? People, in relation to a core process of business, he did not listen to them. He did not think about the customers that Penney’s already had. His strategy involved adding separate boutiques within the actual department store and cutting back prices.
Research by Reingold, Jones, and Kramer (2014) suggests that there would be only three prices for the things that were sold.
It would be the original price (much lower than before), a month long special value price for some items, and a twice monthly extra special price for things they needed to just get rid of (which seems like clearance to me, personally). It seemed that he was trying to make the store seem as if it is just an honest, fair place to make a purchase. He did all of this with dismissing testing and consumer research. He went ahead with a crazy plan and it failed. His strategy may have worked for other products but it could not work for this store that was already established even though it was suffering. If I had to recommend a suggestion to the way that he carried out his time with J.C.Penney, I would start by trying to find out what do the customers want. What ages of people are attracted to that store? I would not have shifted the way the price policy was done by Johnson. I would also empower the employees and also the managers because they knew who the customers were. I would get together a team to help build off of what could be found out or researched. It seems that Johnson perhaps skipped all of the three core processes of business and just wanted to create an entire new
store.
References:
REINGOLD, J., Jones, M., & Kramer, S. (2014). How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying. Fortune, 169(5), 80.