With the naming of Ron Johnson as chief executive officer, JC Penney wanted positive change for the company.

After seeing a steady decline in overall revenues since 2008, the company saw a need for a change. Tom Barry, an SMU professor of marketing, believes the company is trying to be more competitive in the marketplace.

“Penney’s was feeling very strong competition from its major competitors, and that it has been unhappy with its performance in recent years,” Barry said. “It’s usually competitive pressure that persuades an organization to make pretty dramatic changes in its operations. The competitive retail milieu in Dallas is a pressure cooker. There are many and varied retailers that know what they are doing and they are often going after the same target markets.”

Since getting his position, Johnson and his staff have implemented multiple initiatives to rebrand JC Penney.

The company rehired Ellen DeGeneres as its spokesperson despite recent controversy. The stores will no longer hold sales and instead they will have “fair and square” pricing plans with three levels of prices.

The price tags on merchandise will read “.00” on the end of each price, not “.99.”

Possibly the first changes consumers will see is a reorganization of the stores. JC Penney will be organized into shops representing about 100 different brands.

This change is aimed at creating a unique shopping experience from competitors. Johnson believes these changes will help rebrand JC Penney and attract more customers.

However, rebranding comes at a price. The changes that were implemented on February 1, 2012, but the company hasn’t seen success yet.

The company said it had been expecting these losses. Michael Dastugue, chief financial officer, said that the greatest concern over the last quarter was not about making money, but rather beginning the process of revamping the companies approach to business.

“The overarching theme in Q4 was the preparation and completion of the groundwork necessary to begin the execution of our new transformational strategy,” Dastugue said during the conference call on the fourth quarter report.

The message the executive officers are trying to send to investors and consumers is to not be taken aback by the report. The transformation the company is undergoing will take 52 weeks to complete and is only in week three.

Additionally, Johnson said during the conference call that the feedback the company has been receiving from shoppers on its changes has been positive.

“As important as the early sales indicators, it is empirical evidence about how the customer perceives our changes in pricing, promotion and in-store presentation and here we have some encouraging news,” said Johnson.

“Within the first couple of weeks of implementing our new strategy, we’ve seen some meaningful improvements in our customer surveys of the same period in the prior year. ”

John Angle, 21, studies accounting and marketing and has been following the transformation of JC Penney. He believes the decisions being made are improving the company.

“[The transformation] is good. I think they need to shake their image,” Angle said. “They will increase their brand equity by going through all this rebranding.”

Angle says that JC Penney is focusing a smarter group of consumers, the cross-shoppers. Cross-shoppers will buy high-priced luxury items occasionally, but they strive to find good deals for good brands.

They look for high quality merchandise for a lower price. These shoppers are usually middle to upper class and spend more money than other target consumers.

Barry believes in JC Penney’s rebranding strategy mainly because he thinks Johnson is a smart businessman and that he has a plan that will be successful.

“I’m betting they will do fine given that they have a retailing guru as their CEO,” Barry said. “Ron Johnson did outstanding work for Apple, clearly one of the retail marketing geniuses today, and significant work at Target, who has rebranded itself over the years. When you have a CEO with Johnson’s retailing experience, the forecast is going to be positive. ”

Melinda Sims, a mother of two, is the type of consumer JC Penney is hoping will come to its stores. Sims only occasionally shops at JC Penney because she rarely thinks of it as a store that would have something for her family.

Sims has heard about the transformation, but doubts it will make her more interested in the store. She questions some of the company’s business decisions, especially in regards to its recent choice of Ellen DeGeneres, who is openly gay, as a spokesperson.

The choice has drawn calls for a boycott of JC Penney from groups like the American Family Associations who do not like seeing a gay, married woman as a spokesperson.

“That choice surprised me greatly that they would just because they should know that there would be some controversy because it’s just a fact. They should have rethought their decision,” Sims said.

Barry believes that the appointment of DeGeneres was a smart move by JC Penney.

“Ellen is very successful at what she does; she’s a pleasant person; attractive and smart; transparent,” Barry said. “You can be assured that they are after a marketplace that Ellen DeGeneres commands. If that were not the case, they would not have selected her as their new spokesperson.”

However Sims said that she has not written off JC Penney yet and is curious about what the recent changes will bring to the retailer. She says she plans on visiting her local store in a few weeks to see the transformation.

Johnson can only hope that once the changes are complete, just one visit will be enough to bring customers back.