For cautious observers, it may still be too soon to say that the entirety of the ambitious J.C. Penney reinvention is a failure, but one element of it clearly is. Earlier this week, Penney acknowledged the company is going back to Hi-Lo pricing after its switch first to everyday low pricing (EDLP) and then a modified EDLP approach failed to lift sales.
"While our prices continue to represent a tremendous value every day, we now understand that customers are motivated by promotions and prefer to receive discounts through sales and coupons applied at the register," Daphne Avila, a spokesperson for the department store chain, told Reuters earlier in the week.
Back in January, Ms. Avila told Bloomberg News that Penney's reintroduction of sales to modify its EDLP approach "in no way signifies a change to our pricing strategy, but rather an evolution of it."