Target Canada has been plagued with significant supply chain challenges since they’ve arrived. As a result, the company faced immense difficulty with keeping their store shelves stocked with inventory. Target first faced inventory issues during its soft openings, where they explained the cause as unexpectedly high demand for their first three locations (SOURCE). In response, Target decided to open new stores to smooth out the demand for their soft openings, and hoped that it would ease their inventory issues. If it was a demand forecasting issue, it could have been more easily managed using such strategies as increasing responsiveness or pooling demand. However, the months went by, and despite more store locations to supposedly meet this …show more content…
Target Canada had a website, of course, but that was simply it. To put it into perspective, the first time I visited the site was shortly after Target opened their first Canadian store in 2013. The next and last time was a year later during Black Friday 2014 to see if anything had changed since then – it hadn’t. Besides displaying weekly flyers, and store locations and hours, there was really nothing else on the site. Shoppers weren’t able to order anything online, nor were they given the opportunity to see the selection of goods being sold in store. Studies show that Canadian online spending went up from $122 billion in 2012 to $136 billion in 2013 – nearly a 12% increase. Additionally, 77% of Canadian online activities were devoted towards window shopping, or browsing information on goods or services (SOURCE). Other similar retailers, such as Walmart and Sears, took note of this and strove to improve their online platform. With Canadians pushing towards online commerce trends, Target hurt themselves by not being able to meet consumer’s online needs. However, their lack of online presence was somewhat understandable. Target was already facing massive supply chain issues that left their brick-and-mortar stores seem completely empty. Priority was given towards improving their operations and getting everything sorted out first, as ramping up their online presence at the same time would’ve led the company to financial disaster even quicker. Nevertheless, the lack of functionality on their site did not meet the need for access and convenience required by shoppers, and has pushed me away from shopping at Target alongside many other like-minded
Target’s first foreign store investment was in Canada; American stores look to Canada as their first foreign investment because the differences between the two countries are relatively minor. Other stores that have expanded to Canada include Wal-Mart, and Sears, each of these companies proved to be prosperous in Canada. Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and is dominated by the service industry, Wawa would have no trouble fitting into the culture Canada has and dominating the market as they do here, in the United States. After reading about Canada and Wawa, we have realized this move could only benefit Wawa and help their reputation and build their company.
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.
A positive to expanding to Canada is that Canadian shoppers are similar to American shoppers, ideally making this a good target market for growth (Fiorletta, 2015). In an interview regarding expansion in Canada, CO-CEO Walter Rob said, “Our efforts in Canada are part of the effort to grow.” “We think the opportunity for fresh, healthy foods is larger now that it’s ever been”. “And we intend to grow as fast as we have ever grown — 40 new stores next year, 42-44 for the following year.” “That’s 10% square footage growth on top of 15 million square feet of retail we already have.” “People have said maybe we should stop our growth.” “I said, no, we are not going to do that because our strategy is working.” “There’s no reason to stop.” “There’s every reason to keep going.” (Vieira,
Target, a high-end discount department store, hoped to continue expanding and adding to the company’s 1,752 stores, by purchasing 200 Zellers stores, located in Canada. One of Target’s, longtime goals was to expand into Canada , and after a decade, the company took a jump across the border (Shaw, 2011). Because many thousand Canadians hold a Red Card, Target’s reward card, Target assumed this would be a successful expansion, increasing the amount of US brands that encompass Canada’s market. Target spent a year converting the Zeller stores, altering and renovating them to transform them into Target Canada, a subsidiary of Target (Shaw, 2011). They opened 124 stores in locations all over Canada, hiring back only one percent of the former Zellers employees, desiring to make a fresh start for the department store chain (Target Refused Zellers Workers).
Target has seen consistent growth since its inception, and has confidence that future growth will continue (see attached financial statements). In 2004, Target sold two of there business units, Mervyn's and Marshall Field's for approximately $4.9 billion. This allowed for extensive aggregate pretax cash that will be used for future store sites (as well as upper management bonuses). Target's Board also approved a $3 billion share repurchase program which they expect to complete in two to three years.
In order for Target to have been successful, first and foremost, the retailer should have known that they would not be able to beat their competitor, Walmart, in a price war. That alone, is a losing battle. So, a higher quality of products, fewer locations, and a better understanding of Canadian tastes could have propelled the retailer into establishing, for the long term, a profitable global presence with our Canadian neighbors.
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 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 inventory issue also ties in with transportation problems where accurate lead and delivery times are non-existent. The inventory turnover is not at its full potential because if the DC has merchandise yet the stores are stocked out, the inventory is frozen and will become obsolete.
Compared to its rivals Target has not diversified in the retail industry, which makes the company vulnerable to changing shopping patterns and economic downturns.
The purpose of this presentation is to provide a comparative analysis of business activities of two well-known representatives of the US retail industry, Target and Walmart. My research is focused on a business strategy of these largest and most experienced American merchandising companies; particularly, on their activities in Canada. Based on the data collected from the various sources, I would like to detect, analyze, and demonstrate the obvious causes that have lead to a catastrophic failure of Target in its unsuccessful attempt to win a Canadian market.
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
In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many would not expect to see and happen to any major retailer/corporation.
Controlling inventory is known to be one of the toughest problems for companies. With 39 million active customer accounts and a vision such as being "Earth’s biggest selection of product", Amazon has been putting a lot of effort to be as efficient as possible in their inventory management.
Offensive and Defensively Strategic Position: Target initiated many strategic moves to build a better market position. Target 's defensive strategy is to leverage the strength in the technology and the physical store to its advantage, pre-empt its rival in the order online, and store picks up a business model. Target 's defensive strategy to counter Amazon is, to abandon the minimum purchase for free shipping qualification to boost traffic to its online portal.