This is a great post - I agree with your take.

Penneys also stopped accepting coupons and it turned out that most of the older ladies who made up the lion’s share of the clientele loved coupons (who would have thought?). They also hired a retail exec from Apple (Ron Johnson) and he embarked on disasterous changes to stores and other things that regular customers hated. This is a great article that is titled “The J.C. penney Disaster Timeline” from 2012: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-jcpenney-disaster-timeline-how-ex-apple-guru-ron-johnson-is-destroying-the-company-2012-6