Over those years, the relevance of Purpose as a purchase factor has risen 26 percent globally. 47% of consumers have bought a brand at least monthly that supports a cause.

FORBES: Cause Marketing and the Effects

Bob Brodersen of the University of California, in Berkeley, has calculated that moving an application from a general-purpose software implementation to a specialised chip can improve efficiency by a factor of 10, 000 (the efficiency metric being millions of calculations per milliwatt of power consumed).

ECONOMIST: MONITOR

Looking at the two top countries - Finland and South Korea - the report says that there are many big differences, but the common factor is a shared social belief in the importance of education and its "underlying moral purpose".

BBC: UK education sixth in global ranking

For JCPenney, oddly enough, the DeGeneres factor, along with the gay parent catalogue feature, may serve this same multi-generational purpose by being a wee bit edgy even as it affirms family as an abiding touchstone of the JCP ethos.

FORBES: JCPenney in Search of a Market: Is Ellen DeGeneres the Ticket?

The purpose of this provision, of course, is to treat these business types exactly the same, removing one factor from the many that must be addressed before committing to an entity choice.

FORBES: Business Return Due Dates