Wide variety: Target provides certain products to fit the need of their guests throughout all their retail locations. They look to appeal to young, active, and well educated families by setting standards for the products they carry and the layout of there stores. They carry selections of a wide variety of home goods and personal care products; they even carry pet supplies and fresh produce. This allows their consumers to purchase everything they need for their homes within one store; a huge advantage for families and young adults. Higher quality The Target stores offer higher quality products while keeping prices low for customers who take quality into consideration. This is a an advantage for Target by collecting a higher wealth of customers …show more content…
The shift to online shopping is where Target has seen some issues. At first, the retailer was shipping orders from their distribution centers that were already focused on processing the shipments for in-store inventories. This resulted in large amounts of stockouts and loss of some loyal customers. They soon found that an exclusive distribution center soley focused on orders made from Target.com was the right option in this growing market. As more and more customers make purchases online and the rise of mobile purchases, Target will soon need to build more advanced and more widespread distribution centers to keep these orders on …show more content…
This new way of communicating with customers could help lost customers find the products they need and even offer special deals for walking down the right aisles. The idea is to set up bluetooth emitting beacons around the retail store that could transmit signals to customer’s phones while they walk around the store with the Target app open. The signals would show up on user’s phones as a coupon or a reminder about a certain sale being offered. Customers could even page a employee to come assist them without having to wonder around looking for an employee who is not occupied with somebody else. Target wants to be careful to not pester their customers, so for initial testings they keep the alerts to only two per shopping trip. This could really benefit customers who would be on their phones checking prices and looking for better deals. Target could implement a system where a user could price check an item against other stores and if they find a better deal, could get a price match for purchasing the item from the Target store
Target has many competitors in the market, and the level of competition is highly intense. Some of its main rivals are Wal-Mart stores, Home Depot and Costco Wholesale Corp. All of them produce similar products as well as offer almost the same services to their consumers. Naturally, the organization would need a strategy that helps it to stand out and to distinguish it from its competitors, thus, Target 's positioning was based on more than just pricing; it combined quality and style. This was the differentiation strategy that have always been applied since the launch of the organization.
For the most part, Target Corporation’s performance is positive and has been consistently growing in sales. The company has increased its stock value through additional sales resulting from a deliberate
Target, the nation's #2 discount chain, now operates more than 1,500 Target and Super Target stores in 47 states, as well as an online business called Target.com. Target and its larger grocery-carrying stores, Super Target, have carved out a niche by offering more upscale, fashion-forward merchandise than rivals Wal-Mart and Kmart. After years of struggling to turn around its Marshall Fields and Mervyns departments stores divisions, the discounter sold them both in 2004. Target also owns apparel supplier The Associated Merchandising Corp. and issues Target Visa and its proprietary Target Card (www.Answers.com/topic/target-corporation).
According to www.targetcorp.com, Target is an upscale discount retail chain that sells quality products at attractive prices, and prides itself on clean, spacious, and guest-friendly stores. Target is the second largest "general merchandise" retailer (behind Wal-Mart); selling almost anything one would need to complete the "one stop shop", especially with the addition of the SuperTarget stores. The first Target opened in Roseville, Minnesota in 1962. Since then, 1,330 stores located in forty-seven different states, which includes the 141 SuperTarget stores, have opened nationwide. Target also has twenty-two distribution centers located in nineteen states. In addition to the vast number of store locations, Target also has other businesses that include: Target.com, Target Financial Services, Associated Merchandising Corporation, and Target commercial Interiors. Through all the key businesses, Target employs nearly 300,000 people from diverse backgrounds. The current Chairman and CEO of Target is Bob Ulrich.
We can see that Target is successful due to its good brand strategy and thus in order to keep up the success the company must change their strategies and branding so that they can match the needs and the wants of the customers. Even when the companies have a lot of similarities still the differences are greater. Kmart took decisions at a late point and still struggling to capitalize on the opportunities and Target has been active always to capture opportunities and overcome its weaknesses.
Target is also a company that is built on ethics. With integrity instilled in all of their team members, everyone helps to uphold Target’s great reputation and maintain their morals of honesty and family. Another big part of Target’s company culture is their focus on community service. After working for Target, one is truly able to understand the meaning of giving back. At Target, team members dedicate their volunteer hours to work with schools, nonprofit organizations, charities etc. to make a difference in the world.
1. The Discount Department Store. Target prefers to be called as the latter instead of just department store. Expect more, pay less. With this tagline, the customers expect to purchase more items and pay the least amount possible. Not like other retail industries like its competitor Kmart and Wal-Mart, Target maintains retail value in terms of product offerings. They are known in their designer’s items in clothes, exclusive beauty products, categorized and functional goods, and seasonal offerings. It also sells the greatest number of gift cards among its rival business.
Target Corporation is the biggest discount retailing business in the US which comes just after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The headquarters are located in Minneapolis in Minnesota in the USA. George Dayton founded it. It initially started as a family business with a regional retailer shop and later grew into a national full retailer store. The company’s main aim is to offer retail services at friendly rates and, its main attracting feature is discount rates offed on different products in the business. The company has indicated tremendous growth in the retail business. It has a target to outgrow its market and achieve competitive advantage over its competitors. This essay seeks to discuss the competitive analysis and
Target is one of the America’s top retailers, but still has a few things that can be improved upon before it can overtake its top competitor. Although Target may not be the top ranked retailer at the moment, it’s not hard to see why this company has stood the tests of time and continues to thrive today.
The main one is the established and loved brand name that is well liked by customers. Along with this, Target has the perception of being a fun place to shop that comes with an experience. Unlike Wal-Mart, Target has the ability to position themselves as a middle class, hip and more fashionable store to shoppers of this generation (Target Corporation SWOT Analysis, n.d.). Target’s weaknesses include tis business model based on supercenters and other big box stores which make it more difficult for them to reach shoppers who appreciate the smaller convenient stores. Along with this, they have been unable to change their business model to adapting times (Target Corporation SWOT Analysis, n.d.).
Target Corporation being a retail industry, the structure by product grouped to a functional level practices works the best. This is necessary for the other functional levels to collaborate as a single team to produce a positive customer shopping experience. Target Corporation further divided the functional level into a geographic area to exercise management tasks effectively with the given authority. Each structure of the management at the geographic level has a strategy discussion, a line of communication, growth, and progress reporting according to the corporate reporting plan. Jana Potts who manages Target Corporation store has closer to 300, 000 employees working for her and the effective can be improved if the role is broken within domestic into channels, stores into broader segments and a separate global position. The rapidly growing online channel and global expansion are necessary to support Target Corporation's strategy of internal growth and sustain it for long term sustainability. These structural changes will allow Target Corporation to connect with its employee at a functional level and bring changes faster, track and monitor the
The vendors had little choice in the matter and had to do what the Target Corporation said because of them being the second largest discount chain next to the Walmart Corporation (Levinthal, 2012). The Target Corporation had a problem that they had to face because they failed to address the main problems that traditional retailers face because online-only retailers had very low labor costs and did not collect sales tax in many states (Levinthal, 2012). The Target Corporation eventually launched and upgraded its website and has operated by Amazon (Levinthal, 2012). Amazon is a place online were customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online at lowest possible prices (Amazon.com, n.d.). Cloud data storage and fees that Amazon charges others to sell on its website makes Amazon products sell so cheaply which subsidizes the rest of its business (Levinthal, 2012).
On the Target website, it is stated that their mission is to, ”…fulfill the needs and fuel the potential of our guests. That means making Target your preferred shopping destination in all channels by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation and exceptional experiences—consistently fulfilling our Expect More. Pay Less.® brand promise” (Target Corp). It has 1,799 stores in the United States alone and has locations in India. In 2014, they made $72.6 Billion. Similar to Wal-Mart, Target sells household essentials, apparel, groceries, pet supplies. health, beauty items, home furnishing, entertainment, and electronics. Both also have their own branded items to sell at a lower price than the commercial brands, and each corporation also has a
Nowadays, Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) is the most used strategic way in Marketing. It is the prime of the available methods that are applied to create marketing models in practice. This model is beneficial when making marketing communication plans because it aids marketers to prioritize ideas and thereby create and advertise unique and appropriate slogans to communicate with various segments this is a segment based strategy rather than a product based strategy. This strategy enables to communicate more appropriate messages to product appealing segments.
Too often, a marketing function is misunderstood, because many people do not understand what is meant by ‘Marketing’.