J.C. Penney: Will they return to honorable and honored values?

By: American Decency Staff

Value is coming back to JC Penney! At least, that's what we all hope.

The company executives are hoping that the company regains its monetary value, but we are hoping they move back to the God-honoring values the company was founded on.

One thing is for sure, they are taking a step towards both goals with the firing of their CEO, Ron Johnson. Johnson, the former Apple Vice President of Retail Operations, was supposed to bring the store into the twenty-first century which meant, according to Forbes, "Mr. Johnson abruptly scrapped JCPenney’s dubious pricing policies of marking up prices and then offering discounts, with heavy promotions, and coupons. He proposed to offer more interesting products… at reasonable prices all the time."

Along with scrapping all the good deals, Johnson also introduced some new advertising polices which ADA and other pro-family ministries and individuals took great offense to. As columnist Al Lewis celebrated, "Ron Johnson, the department-store chain's new chief executive, is portraying alternative lifestyles as a wholesome part of American consumer culture. He has hired Ellen DeGeneres as a spokeswoman and printed catalogs with smiling gay parents and their adorable children."

The problem is consumers who want to buy a shirt or a lamp don't necessarily want to buy the homosexual couple selling it. Buying a shirt should not be a social issue or a moral conundrum.

In fact, When One Million Moms organized a boycott following Degeneres' new ads, Johnson told consumers exactly how much he cared about their opinions, "one of the great things about America is people can speak their mind, and we stand squarely behind Ellen as our spokesperson and that's a great thing. Because she shares the same values that we do in our company."

Al Lewis certainly understood the line Johnson had drawn in the sand. In his column on Penney's then-new CEO back in 2012, Lewis did a little marketing for J.C.

Ever since then, we've been finding out exactly how that worked for them. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about stocks, but I know NBC's report on Ron Johnson's time at the helm sounds pretty bad, "In the process of going after a new customer base, the company also lost touch with its core customer and saw its same-store sales nose dive 25 percent last year… Its share price also shed about half its value and the company recently reported a $552 million quarterly loss."

It would be unrealistic to say that that's all because of the company's preachy pro-gay advertisements, but one thing is for sure. They didn't help.

What did help the company originally (and ironically) were the Biblical values of its founder James Cash Penney. The son of a Baptist minister, JC originally named his stores "Golden Rule stores," referring to Matthew 7:12. Here's what he had to say about advertising, "A store's best advertisement is the service its goods render, for upon such service rests the future, the good-will, of an organization."

That's an advertising model we can all get behind. We don't need department stores to provide us with a conscience. We just need them to provide us with good service.

You may recall this additional history that helped propel J.C. Penney downward.   Quoting:

It started in 2011 when the company hired Ellen DeGeneres, a vocal proponent of same-sex "marriage" as its spokesperson.

The choice drew fire from organizations like the American Family Association (AFA) because it was a departure from the store's longstanding values. When AFA's One Million Moms complained, J.C. Penney's new CEO, Ron Johnson, stubbornly dug in his heels.

Then, on Mothers' Day, the company shocked customers with a blatant endorsement of homosexuality in an ad that featured two moms–followed by a two-dads ad for Fathers' Day. Coupled with an overhaul of the stores' pricing system, the stock never recovered.….

Whether the retailer will learn from its mistakes is yet to be seen. But J.C. Penney's freefall should serve as a warning to other companies who are itching to jump on the same-sex bandwagon. Pandering to those who want to redefine marriage (and the rest of society with it) may earn you a pat on the back from the Human Rights Campaign, but in the long term, it's bad policy.

Americans want corporate neutrality in the culture wars, and when they don't find it, they will go elsewhere.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/j.c.-penneys-fires-ceo-after-plummeting-sales-following-gay-ad-campaign

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