Every company has internal and external forces that effect how they operate within the community in which they are located and also within their own walls. These internal and external forces play a strong impact on the company’s profitability and success. These forces have an effect on what consumers they attract or ignore and how they are perceived by those who have the buying power. A mistake any analyzing and implementing measures to assist with these factors could greatly affects a company’s bottom line and success. This is why any company wanting to grow and be successful will need to take all of these forces; sociocultural, technological, economic, environmental and political-legal into consideration in creating their strategic plan. The five general forces in the societal environment are economic, technological, political-legal, environmental and sociocultural. Economic forces regulate the exchange of materials, money, energy, and information. They Technological forces generate problem-solving inventions. Political-legal forces allocate power and provide constraining and protecting laws and regulations. Environmental forces are the impact that …show more content…
weather, recycling and waste management have on a company. Sociocultural forces regulate the values, mores, and customs of society (Wheelen, 2015). By performing a PESTEL analysis, a company lists the variables in each category, and importance is determined by the country in which the company is operating and the industry. Target attempts to address these issues to keep the brand successful.
For example in the economic forces they work to provide higher end discounted items to keep the profits up by allowing shoppers to have quality and cost savings. In the technological forces, Target has used the increase use of mobile platforms to allow their customers to shop online and pick up in the store by saving time. With the political-legal forces Target works to provide a safe and non-discriminating environment for all customers. Environmental forces are taken in to effect by looking at better waste recycling management to decrease their carbon footprint. Target works hard to represent the values and mores of their customer base, by being actively involved within the community and addressing current social
issues. In looking at these forces you realize that there are fragmented and consolidated industries for each business model out there. A fragmented industry are characterized by low entry barriers and commodity-type products that are hard to differentiate, the combination of these traits tend to result in boom and bust cycles as profits rise and fall. The low entry barriers imply that whenever demand is strong and profits are high, new entrants will flood the market hoping to profit from the boom. A consolidated industry is dominated by a small number of large companies (an oligopoly) or in extreme cases, by just one company (a mononpoly), and companies are ofter in a position to determine industry prices. Target fits this consolidated industry as there are many competitors in the retail segment and they have direct competitors from Walmart and Amazon. Within the retail market and with these competitors it is still a consolidated industry. There are many barriers for a new retailer coming into the industry and taking business shares away from these retailers. Corporate structure and culture can be a strength or weakness to an organization depending on the current situation. For instance, culture that emphasizes on constant renewal is a reliable strength when it comes to organizational change. It would be easier to domesticate change with such a culture than when the organization professes a conservative culture. Organizational culture is a great advantage when inducting new employees because it gives them some insight of what is expected of them. However, corporate culture and structure can be an avenue of weaknesses when it comes to mergers if the two organizations merging have different cultures. The differences might call for restructuring of the resulting organization to accommodate both organizations. Restructuring is an expensive affair, which might have negative impact on customers (Films on Demand, 2011).
From the employees’ perspective; they are managed someone with experience in their same specialty who can effectively understand and review their work. Furthermore, they can move up within organization, which gives a reason for them to be loyal to the job. They also have the opportunity to work with others in their field, which allows for knowledge sharing and learning new skills. From the managers’ perspectives; this would make their jobs easier and makes them able to supervise the individual’s performance of their team members to distribute recognition, rewards and punishments accordingly. This has created an environment that hugely corresponds with Target’s core strategy, differentiation. Many of the shoppers have expressed their satisfaction with the services that provided by Target and more specifically with how friendly the staff
The strategic recommendations provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors, while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the business. In the case study, it was discovered that there were sources of opportunities in which the company would invest.
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.
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
A strategic analysis provides an examination of both the internal and external factors impacting on the organisation (Papulova & Gazova, 2016). City
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
What exactly does it take to create a successful leading retail store? So many companies are in competition of gaining the shopper’s loyalty they end up neglecting other important aspects. A perfect retailer has to balance out high-quality, attractive prices, customer loyalty, and an enjoyable environment. “Target has experienced considerable growth in the last decade because its stores offer fashionable merchandise at low prices in a pleasant shopping environment.” (pg42) “It has developed an image of ‘cheap chic’.” (pg42)
The Target Corporation formerly known as “The Dayton Dry Goods Company” is a major retailing company that was founded in 1902 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by George Draper Dayton. It is ranked the second largest discount retailer in the United States and ranked thirty- sixth on the Fortune 500 as of 2013. The Target Corporation has been serving this nation with the best price possible goods since their expansion from “Dayton” and is continuously winning the hearts of consumers with their dedication and service. A phenomenal merchandising strategy and cross channeling has enabled this upscale discounter to serve their purpose of customer loyalty and fulfill their promise of “Expect more and Pay less”.
Target has differentiated itself from other competitors by offering high-end, fashion-conscious products at quite affordable prices. This attracts buyers from all over the world. Target sells not only clothes, but food, beauty products, cleaning supplies, office supplies and much more. This appeals to anyone and everyone in all different countries. Both companies are very crucial to our economy and also other countries economies because they both appeal to basically anyone and everyone.
This is a crucial part of a strategic analysis because ‘…organisations do not exist in a vacuum, they are part of a complex world’ (Bowman 1987:61) and many factors can influence operations, beneficially and unfavourably. However, these can be difficult to comprehend due to their complexity, diversity and fast changing nature. Necessarily a number of techniques have been developed to facilitate the process and to ‘…contribute to answering the key managerial question…’of what ‘…opportunities and threats might arise in the future’ (Johnson & Scholes 2002:99).
When looking at Target’s value chain, it is evident that they apply aspects of both design and corporate responsibility while thinking through every decision they make to ensure it lives up to their values and helps the world. Starting at the top, they look at design. Design is what they call the heart of the business. Looking at every detail from the big picture to the small things that make a Target shopping experience, the goal is to do it with greater efficiency, style and smarts. (Corporate Responsibility Report, 2014).
In a world of free trade, growing competition and accessibility to foreign markets, the need for methodical market analysis and assumptions is steadily rising in today’s business environment. It is just a normal way of thinking to primarily intent to eliminate the financial before entering a new and foreign market. This suggests that enterprises have to develop an overall strategy for their business in order to gain competitive advantage and consequently market share. With the words of Michael E. Porter, professor at Harvard University and leading authority on competitive strategy, this desirable market success is indirectly linked to the individual structure of a market. The unique structure of a single market influences the strategic behaviour and the development of a competitive strategy within a firm. The competitive strategy finally decides whether a company performs successfully on the market or not. Referring to this interpretation of business success, M. E. Porter established his five forces framework that enables directives to gather useful information about the business environment and the competitive forces in industries.
...lopment industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses within the company. The Business Strategy should reflect the main issues that determine the long-term
Strategic implementation is a critical factor when making decisions regarding issues that affect the vision, mission, or objectives of an organization. Strategies are often implemented in accordance to the culture of the organization, the nature of control systems, the stakeholders, and the nature of the organizational design. In order to achieve success in the implementation of strategies, the structure of these factors must work in coordination with one another. For instance, the strategic vision of CPK lies in the creation of a globally recognized brand name and therefore, all of the goals and objectives of CPK must be directed in realizing that the company achieves this objective (California Pizza Kitchen 2011). Furthermore, the vision statement is inclusive in itself in that it communicates the message in a directional, flexible, and focused manner.
It is very crucial that managers have the outmost knowledge of the external factors because it will help reduce or eliminate of threats and help gain beneficial opportunities for the firm. The ability to know external environmental factors can also help managers know exactly where needs more attention in the firm’s venture. There are six firm’s macroenvironmental factors that are vital and should be of knowledge to managers and firms which are: political, economic, legal, sociocultural, technological, ecological and legal (PESTEL) (Rothaermal, 2017). The political external factors includes government bodies, economic factors includes the growth rates, interest rates, levels of employment, price stability and currency exchange rates, sociocultural factors are made up of society’s norms, culture and values, technological factors are the knowledge of application in order to create or improve products, ecological factors includes global warming, the natural environment and sustainable economic growth and legal factor involves the laws and regulation (Rothaermal, 2017). All of these six factors previously mentioned can either pose a threat or advantage for the