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J. C. Penney, Inc., with headquarters in Plano, Texas, operates 872 department stores in 49 states and Puerto Rico. It sells family apparel and footwear, accessories, fine and fashion jewelry, beauty products, home furnishings, appliances, mattresses, and furniture as well as providing services, including salon, optical, portrait photography, and custom decorating. The company also sells its products through its website jcpenney.com utilizing its stores as fulfillment centers. It currently has 98,000 full-time employees. In the last seven years J.C. Penney has been struggling to redefine itself. Facing declining sales in 2011, it hired Ron Johnson as CEO to revitalize the company, but instead of attracting new customers, his strategies alienated its core customers and resulted in the loss of $5 billion in revenue and a loss of $1 billion in less than two years. In 2013, the Board of Directors fired Johnson and reinstated the previous CEO, Mike Ullman. His role was to stabilize the company until a new CEO could be hired. In 2015, Marvin Ellison, a former Home Depot executive, was hired and initiated his own strategies until leaving in the spring of 2018 to become CEO of Lowe's. Now, Jill Soltau, former CEO of JOANN stores, has been hired as the new CEO. This case gives students the opportunity to evaluate the company's turnaround strategies as it struggles to survive in a challenging retail environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]