Real World Application of Marketing Concepts and the On-Ground Retailing Model Issues

The Challenges of Applying Marketing Concepts in Real-world Situations

Discuss how the concepts in this course can be applied to real-world situations and can increase your chances of career or life success.Part II: On-ground retailing has experienced significant difficulties of late with many closing their doors. Select one that has either closed or is still open, and discuss the issues associated with the model. What could they do or could they have done to maintain?

The above questions are what my colleagues are responding to Assignment:  Read the 3 short student responses to the Discussion board post below.  All 3 are my classmates’ responses to the discussion board questions above.  Please reply to all 3 classmates post using A). at least 150 words and B). the instructors’ directions.  Please mention the products/goods my classmates used in their responses.  Then reply with 1 substantive response paragraph.  

Instructor’s directions: Follow these instructions when writing your response.  Note:  When responding to your peers, praise them for what they are doing well, and lend your own information and/or perspective to your peer's discussion response. (All of your responses within the discussion threads need to be no less than six or seven full sentences in length and pertain to the Discussion Board Question/Topic, in order to be eligible for participation credit).

I must say that this class has been one of the most applicable and interesting classes I have taken so far.  Doing the research on the marketing and “selling” side of these mega companies has been a real eye opener. I have already used several of the marketing practices or company analysis’ we studied in this class.  I serve as a fire chief on a suburban area just outside of a major metropolitan city and sometimes getting firefighters to come our way is hard.  We have paid firefighters as well as volunteer firefighters and getting them to come here instead of the larger cities can be a challenge.  I will be using the SWOT and PEST analysis to help find out what our true identity is and some of the marketing practices to help sell ourselves in hopes of creating a better marketing program and attracting more people. 

The company that I picked is still in business but struggling just like many other retail giants.  I chose JCPenney because this was a store I loved as a kid growing up.  My parents would always give me and my sister a JCPenney and a Sears catalog to pick our Christmas from and I remember circling every toy in the entire catalog hoping to get it for Christmas.  Most kids now a days will not get that excitement of being able to circle the toys and wait until Christmas in hopes of getting them. 

Analyzing the Issues Faced by JCPenney

JCPenney has made some leadership changes and hard decisions in hopes to keep their business alive.  In May of 2020 JCPenney began to close some stores as an optimization strategy to help the company stay sustainable and hopefully help with profitable growth.  They will be closing 175 JCPenney locations leaving them with 671 stores across the US and Puerto Rico. 
I think there are a couple of things that the company could have done with their marketing program to maybe help things get better.

 They could have advertised and focused more on the exclusive products they offer.  JCPenney is known for have celebrities launch clothing or perfume lines and selling them exclusively in their stores.  This is what set them apart for a long time and them the online market ramped up and JCPenney did not keep up with the online side or the marketing. 
They could have tried to partner with one of the online mega companies instead of trying to be in direct competition, if they were one of the first to create a partnership maybe they could have weathered the storm better that those who didn’t.  Not sure what that partnership would have looked like, but I believe the online giants would have been open to such partnerships early on in their business. 

This course has outlined and taught me a great deal regarding real-world marketing.  Marketing is a crucial piece of growing a successful business and having a better understanding of marketing strategies will assist me in future career goals.  Working in the energy sector has presented many challenges along the way, including finding proper ways to market me and the company to potential clients.  With these new tools learned in the class, I have stronger confidence to move forward.  

I understand firsthand how the pandemic has affected the retail market space.  My wife has owned her own retail storefront for the past 9 years and was heavily impacted during the past year.  A large retail chain that has suffered and recently downsized a large number of its storefronts is The Children's Place.  Their primary customer base is geared toward young children and infants.  With online retail growth has dramatically cut its annual sales for the past years.  The company decided to close nearly half of its stores in order to cut growing debt and costs.  With a new marketing campaign and focusing on specific markets, they have been successful in making a profit.  

I have learned many aspects about marketing during this class and I also found that certain skills that I have developed like how to build your own network, how to build a personal brand, how much risks needs to be taken, how much important is to learn to adapt new methods as well as technologies and mainly importance of the feedback to beat competition within your business are very helpful to become more successful within my professional journey. I have studied and learned how certain businesses have become very successful and survived not only decades but centuries which represent that the world might get changed  but some core principles never get changed to achieve success by getting awareness of the latest trends and grabbing marketing opportunities through following it to market your business in this world.  

I have also learned that how you can get tremendous growth opportunities with customer centric policies with certain values and ethics or inheriting successful business models from other successful businesses or following four P's or doing analysis like SWOT, PESTEL along with continuous innovations and implementing combination of traditional plus digital marketing strategies by understanding your customer data as well as their interest within current environment.
 
Sears, once the largest retailer in the U.S. who has operated more than 3,500 locations across the U.S. under its namesake Sears brand and Kmart has filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It appears that there will be 19 Sears department stores and 15 Kmart stores remaining across the U.S. at the moment and all others were closed during the past 2 years time span. Sears suffered many management failures that contributed to its demise but it has also been slow compared to many other retailers in implementing technological advances.

A lack of investment in new products and technology at a time when e-commerce made all kinds of merchandise readily available leads fewer consumers to think about Sears or Kmart. Swifter and more thorough adoption of retail technology would have helped Sears compete in an increasingly customer focused market. The difference is that Amazon was founded as a tech company that does retail but not as a retail company that tries to deploy new technology with innovations while Sears decided to be a conglomerate in essence.