J.C. Penney

Troubled department store J.C. Penney saw its stock continue to drop on Wednesday after its announcement on Monday of a new marketing chief. Penney's stock was down another 48 cents, or 3.6 percent, to close Wednesday at $12.80. That came on top of a loss of 54 cents on Tuesday. The last shares closed that low was in 2001. The company will post its latest earnings report on Aug. 20. Penney's has been reeling since former CEO Ron Johnson's strategy to

J.C. Penney has hired an executive from the mac-and-cheese world to reconnect with its middle-income shoppers. The beleaguered department store on Monday named Kraft Foods Inc. executive Debra Berman as senior vice president of marketing to help revitalize the struggling brand, filling a void in the company that remained for 14 months. Penney is trying to win back customers who fled during a

In the second and final part of this interview with Beth Guastella, the recently named president and COO of giggle, a specialty retaile

A warning for bargain shoppers: Is your favorite retailer misleading you with those big sales? We've reported on this before, and now we're back with a new development. We all love a good sale, and when you see that sign — 20 percent off, 30 percent off, 50 percent off — you assume you're getting a deal. But we found that sale price may not be a deal at all.

As other retailers struggle with slipping sales, branding problems and public relations controversies — or, in some cases, all three — an opportunity emerges for the once-venerable company. Brand strategist David Brier of DBD International shows how J.C. Penney can seize it.

As the percentage of consumers buying online continues to steadily increase each year, I'd expect the emphasis put on website performance by retailers would also increase. Let's see how our highlighted retailers — 1-800-Flowers.com, Williams-Sonoma and J.C. Penney — performed for Mother's Day shoppers.

After a disastrous rollout of an everyday low pricing model, J.C. Penney is now facing more controversy as it changes its prices yet again. The company is defending its return to coupons and discounts, saying they're popular with consumers. Yet the Plano, Texas-based retailer has been caught putting more expensive price tags on top of cheaper ones. "That's awful," shopper Sue Jackson said when News 8 showed her a men's shirt with a $50 sticker hiding a $30 price. "I never thought they would do that, especially after all the trouble they just had."

After more than a year of management and financial upheaval, J.C. Penney executives last month asked a therapist to address employees at an internal meeting. He ended up traumatizing them more. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, J.C. Penney chief merchant Liz Sweney brought in an organizational therapist to help employees cope with the firing of former CEO Ron Johnson in April and a disastrous year that saw revenue plummet $4.3 billion, or 25%. The pair proceeded to compare the experience to a bomb explosion and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A tea kettle designed by architect Michael Graves, who has a long history of designing consumer products that don't resemble a saluting Hitler, has J.C. Penney back in the news for the wrong reasons yet again. After the Hitler tea kettle story went viral, J.C. Penney took to Twitter to reassure the public there was no intended connection between the product and the Nazi leader. 

Bemused motorists took photographs of the huge J.C. Penney billboard advertising a tea kettle as they drove past it on the 405 Interstate highway near Culver City in California, one of America's busiest stretches of roads. "That Hitler looks like a kettle," commented one user of Reddit, one of several websites where the image was posted over the weekend.