DINESH GOTTIPATI sent a message to Marvin R. Ellison - President of J. C. Penney Company Inc.- email address that said:
Hi Marvin,
My name is Dinesh and I am writing to you as a fan/stock holder of JCPenny and would like to see its success in coming years.
I like the way you do things and I am hopeful that you are taking the company in the right direction. I have seen the JCP getting improved fast in your era as a CEO. I thought this idea I got may(Or may not) help you. 🙂 Without wasting much of your time, here is it.
We know online shopping has increased a lot in the last decade and its hurting sales of retailers like JCP, Macys and Kohls. I think your former CEO is right about the comment No one is taking amazon serious except for walmart . May be he is right and may be now is the time to think about how to beat the online marketing with a new strategy.
.
Fundamental difference between online shopping vs regular shopping is the accessibility/ease of getting to the product. In online shopping, product is very accessible via a browser or an app and people can place orders using their PCs, phones, tablets etc (Keyword here is Ease of getting to the product)
However Ease of getting to the product is not the only key factor. Especially when you are shopping for clothing and stuff, looks of an item can be deceiving in pics and when the item actually arrives, you may feel that it is not as as good as its shown on the website. And then for the return process, user has to go to nearest store. If its amazon kind of website where they purchased the item from, then the package has to be dropped at the UPS/Fedex. This process is tedious if your instinct(choice/color/size) goes wrong. So user may want to feel item (or better try it on) before making a decision. In this regard, physical stores have an edge over online sites especially for people who wants to feel a product before buying it. Also, returning a product is also much easier in case of physical store. This might be the strongest reason why you retail guys are still in the market. (Key word here is feel of the product in real time )
Why dont you guys try and provide both of these at one place. Like bring the items to communities (dont know if bringing item to home is a nice idea or not that is why may be a common place in a community is good ).
Lets say hire/contract a liaison per community.
When I said community its group of houses together. (We all know urban/sub-urban america is built like communities).
For instance I live in Southern trails community in Pearland which has about 900 homes and has common area such as picnic/gym/barbeque area etc (Or even a cul de sac of a street is good if we design the equipment properly.).
When a user places a request online for show of an item, that community liaison can add that item to his vehicle ( vehicle might have proper equipment like portable fitting rooms/mirror) and bring it to the it to user. I guess user appreciates the convenience and tend to give you more business.
Not only just the requested item, liaison can put some extra items on display which are best sellers/instantly attractive things which may get you more business.
The liaison can set up specific regular/uniform times to be consistent meaning every day, at the same time he/she covers a specific community so that people living there will get used to that time and process easily.
If more people are used to it and request for more item-shows, you guys can always increase the number of liaisons.
This technique is not new in India, where a merchant brings Sarees to rural places where people cannot afford to go to cities and explore/buy stuff.
Please think among these lines..if not this strategy, come up with something else. In the end, I wish you and the company well.
Regards,
Dinesh
