Becky Isaacs

English 1301 Internet Essay

JCPenney versus Kohl’s Online

Being a multi-billion dollar retailer comes with its perks. JCPenney’s dominance over catalog merchandising has now extended into the cyber world at www.jcpenney.com. This website is multi-functional and easy to navigate, but how would JCPenney’s new e-commerce site stack up against its toughest competitor, Kohl’s, on the web? The answer may surprise you. This is an intriguing look at how varied retail comparisons can be. While JCPenney is struggling with sales on the retail floor, Kohl’s continues to exceed expectations in their stores. Online though, it is a completely different story.

Kohl’s has a fledgling site located at www.kohls.com. The homepage for this site looks very modern and eye-catching with its large feature window and cute icons. Navigating into the site; however, a customer may notice that there are no opportunities to make online purchases or to view product. JCPenney’s homepage is dedicated to listing all departments and displaying several links to some of our strategic alliances. For instance, JCPenney’s website is loaded with links to companies like Eckerd.com and Fresh Flowers.com. There are also several direct links to products like Sony and Dockers. Kohl’s homepage is simple and bare unlike JCPenney’s cluttered doorstep; however, JCPenney lists all links on the homepage, which makes online shopping easier overall.

The major difference between these two sites is the shop-ability of each. Kohl’s has yet to expand their website to an e-commerce base. It was dramatically easier for JCPenney to expand online because of their established warehousing ability for the catalog consumer. JCPenney has the ability to receive an online order and ship the merchandise within 48 hours, a feat unsurpassed by any online retailer. Kohl’s would need to contract their suppliers to “drop ship” (the process of shipping merchandise to fill open orders with no warehousing needed) all merchandise to fill Internet orders. JCPenney’s site includes color pictures of every catalog item, and the customer can shop online by using a catalog number. This amenity is something Kohl’s can not pursue because their lack of catalog merchandising.

JCPenney also has the advantage of offering direct customer service online. Any online customer can quickly contact JCPenney by completing an online questionnaire detailing precisely what the customer needs. On the Kohl’s website, a customer may scroll through several screens of customer service information before they are given the email address to contact their customer service department. On www.jcpenney.com a customer can click the “Customer Service” button and be taken to the main customer service page.

In this new environment of online shopping, a customer must also be aware that returns of merchandise are sometimes necessary. For JCPenney, a customer can make returns at any of the 1200 retail stores across the United States. Kohl’s, with only 300 stores, would have a greater degree of difficulty handling customer returns, as well as incurring high shipping costs for merchandise sent back to stores.

In the battle for customer loyalty and sales, a retailer must be able to contend online with its competitors. It is vital that a retailer monitor and update its e-commerce website at all times. Those retailers who fail to accomplish online shop-ability are losing thousands of customers per day. In the struggle between JCPenney and Kohl’s, it is apparent that one of the two has forged ahead in the cyber world while the other is falling quickly behind. In the future it will be the online retailer with superb customer satisfaction and exceptional accuracy in order that will be alive and kicking into the next millennium.