An Executive Summary of Circuit City - A Leader in the Industry of Electonic Retailers

O’Reilly Auto Parts utilizes replenishment software to achieve this goal. The economic downturn, resulted in negative effects for Cisco Systems and Black & Decker. However, at O’Reilly’s, the economic downturn provided an increase in business. Obviously, when the economy is in a nosedive consumers and businesses will severely limit what they choose to purchase. Therefore, instead of spending money on technology or home improvement supplies, consumers purchased auto parts to repair their old vehicles.

Several economic trends beginning in the late 1980s helped WalMart to gain market share in the industry. The economic slowdown that lasted into the mid 1990s forced retailers to drop their prices to draw in customers. When the economy returned to prosperity in the late 1990s, this competition only increased. Companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Co. met this competition by restructuring and focusing more on their retail business. WalMart was now forced to compete with companies designed to better serve the consumer.

While Kmart was taking time to recover from filing Chapter 11, its rivals like Wal-Mart and Target were stealing its customers. When Kmart was focusing on random in-store discounts, Wal-Mart and Target were pitching low prices, broad inventories, hip products, and a pleasant shopping experience (2002). Jalexson states that in 2003 Edward Lambert rescued Kmart from bankruptcy. Lambert wanted to attract customer’s back, but the closing of 28% of Kmarts over the last two years hurts the chains ability to attract customers and forced the remaining stores to pay a higher portion of advertising costs. Then, in January of 2003 CEO Julian Day said that when a company exits bankruptcy it should emphasize the exclusive brands like; Joe Boxer, Sesame Street and of course Martha Stewart (2003).

So naturally this is a good sign not just for Sony but for every other business out there. A stronger economy will lead to more sales and higher profits. Currently analysts believe that we may have a 4 percent growth rate in 2014 (The Associated Press). If this is the case we can expect better fiscal reports from Sony this year than 2013, sure the company is always losing money due to its failing cell phone department. Consumers account for 70 percent of our economy and if they have more buying power it will mean good news for the shareholders.

And while Wal-Mart was able to squeeze more value out of its stores and its systems, Kmart lost ground. By the time Kmart had finally decided to start devoting more resources to IT, it was so far behind Wal-Mart that catching up would have been a near-impossible task without the recession in the early part of this decade. With the effects of the recession taken into account, Kmart instead was consigned to also-ran status among discount retailers. Another problem was that Kmart did not correctly anticipate customer needs. For instance, let's say that Kmart buys a new style of shirt and stocks it in pink, yellow, green and blue.

This has created a saturated market that drives profitability down because companies have to offer lower prices to compete with competitors. Because of industry trends, Verizon has been constantly restructuring to reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and align the company’s One Verizon vision with the company’s departments. The shift to the One Verizon model resulted in analyzing of all departments within the company. The One Verizon model is

One look at the common-size income statements for these companies can tell a story. While Jones Apparel Group was lagging at year ended 1998, even with a restructuring charge on Liz Claiborne’s income statement, 1999 was a different story. Huge growth at Jones lead to revenues double of that one year ago while Liz, while increasing, was quickly falling behind. The growth for both of these companies continued into the year ended 2000, but Jones Apparel Group’s results were brilliant compared to Liz Claiborne’s. One billion dollar growth in revenues as well as higher net income is making Jones Apparel Group the company of the future.

(Hoovers). In terms of Entry Barriers, Dells direct to consumers sales approach has increased their sales each year and they will soon be among their top competitors. Because of this approach, Dell has entered into this highly competitive market in a unique way. The biggest entry barrier that Dell has to face when entering into the technology industry is having customers gain the trust of company over the more popular veteran computer companies. Nevertheless many of competing companies use a range of different suppliers.

Visual Effect (VFX) industry are changing rapidly. Back in the 1980’s until now, many milestone had been made within the industries using groundbreaking technology. Imagery things that can never be done before can now easily archived by artist. This increases the demand of shot in effects per year, in addition to government tax incentives making the industries more globalize. Technological advances making the competition barrier even lower thus resulting excessive supply than demand.

They have survived merely due to using a model of business that has sustained them. However, they will need to continue to focus on change management in order to seek out needs of the business, reduce risks, creativity, and implementing change that favors the customer’s needs. The Target Company will need to make the necessary changes that will heighten the customers shopping experience. Their business change management business model needs to reflect if either or both incremental or second order change is best for them. It is in the best interest of the company that they gage and leverage customers feedback via in-store personal experiences, random surveys from direct customer communication, online feedback, and manager escalations in order to find out how they can use these tools as continuous improvement methods.