The Minneapolis based Target Corporation announced in December that criminals forced their way into the company’s computer system. The data breach compromised 40 million credit and debit card accounts of customers who shopped during the holiday season between November 27 and December 15, 2013. The data captured was far broader than originally imagined as hackers gained access to 70 million customer’s personal information including names, home addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses. Additionally, expiration dates, debit-card PIN numbers, and the embedded code on the magnetic strip of the card were stolen.
The Chairman, President, and CEO Gregg Steinhafel apologized to all Target customers, shared in their frustration, and stated the company is thoroughly investigating the data breach. Steinhafel confirmed that the customers have zero liability for any
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fraudulent charges made during the breach. Target attempted to contact customers through email if an address was available to provide tips on how to safeguard against consumer frauds and guaranteed no personal customer information will be requested during this communication. Target advised customers to be wary of frauds during this vulnerable time and to continually check their monthly statements for any discrepancies. For protection and cautionary measures, Target offered a year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to customers who shopped at their stores. To receive this free service customers were given a three-month enrollment period to sign up for the protection. Customers were not alone; Target Corporation, which has 1,921 stores in 1,797 locations in the U.S. and 124 in Canada, also suffered due to the breach. As a result, Target’s stock declined 32 cents to $63.03 after the market opened following the breach and the company’s original fourth-quarter adjusted earnings guidance of $1.50 to $1.60 per share was lowered significantly to $1.20 to $1.30 per share. Furthermore, Target predicted that fourth-quarter sales at stores opened for one year will drop to about 2.5 percent and this breach could adversely affect future periods. Privacy and security in today’s technological world are a constant concern.
After the breach, many Target customers refused to shop at their stores due to losing trust in the company. Target’s security breach was not an isolated incident; numerous other companies have faced similar security breaches such as Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Sony, and this could even happen on your own personal home computer. As a Target cardholder and loyal customer for many years, I believe the company took appropriate actions to notify customers of the breach. Target informed me by email and sent a letter reassuring my information was not compromised. As a valued Target cardholder, I was given the opportunity to apply for the free credit-monitoring program, which I took full advantage of. As an additional measure, Target provided customers with a new online safety feature to monitor suspicious activity by allowing customers to set alerts through email or text when purchases exceeded a specified amount. Consequently, Target is tightening security and making every effort to gain back trust to retain
customers.
According to Kantar Retail, most of Target’s shoppers are younger on average than its rivals, and more educated. That means it has to consistently offer something different and appealing; it emphasizes more on the latest-trend apparel, eye-catching home décor and exclusive designer merchandise than its competitors. This results in a willingness to pay a bit more for items by customers who are willing to pay a bit more. Moreover, this successful
For example credit card transactions and security breaches have occurred which have cost the company million of dollars. Target Corporation must do a better job of securing its data to prevent future loss in profit, sales, and stock values.
The title of the article I chose is “Why Target failed in Canada”. The article details the issues the retail chain sustained as it tried to place its first global presence in Canada. Much of what occurred stemmed from a CEO and management team that was unable to foresee the issues that would develop from entering the Canadian marketplace. It was havoc from the very beginning. The first questionable issue was that the retailer decided to open 124 stores in Canada in a matter of one year. This overblown idea of having so many stores open up in a short amount of time would eventually lead to the additional issues that caused the retailer to have its first global downfall. The retailer purchased the leases of a discount chain in Canada that had
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.
Issa utilizes statistics to suggest ideas. He says, “The Office of Personnel Management’s security breach resulted in the theft of 22 million Americans’ information, including fingerprints, Social Security numbers, addresses, employment history, and financial records” (Issa). Issa also adds that, “The Internal Revenue Service’s hack left as many as 334,000 taxpayers accounts compromised‑though just this week, the IRS revised that number to o...
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.
...o city council to vote on whether or not it would be a good idea, but the council voted not to go along with the idea and cancelled the revamping project. They said "the Strip wouldn’t be the same if they got rid of historic stores along 18th street."
According to Schafer (2013), Target Corporation desire is to improve Target Brand and be a better version of Target with an incremental products and services. Target Corporation acquisitions counter any threat from other rival online retailers and allow Target Corporation to cross promote between Target and the new entity strengthening its
Target bank is called the Target National Bank. It is owned by the Target Corporations itself and all the receivables go into Target has approximately 1,600 million dollars worth of lines of credits from twenty five different banks, approximately half the worth of the line is used and is due back for payment June 2005, with an extension all the way up to June 2006. The other half of the payment is due June 2008. The expected long term rate of securities rate for October 31 2004 was 8.5 %.
Target Corporation was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It sells its products through its stores and digital channels, including Target.com, and presently operates 1,826 stores. This report will focus on the capital structure of Target Corporation, discuss Target's most recent short-term and long-term financing decisions, give an analysis of the economic, business, and competitive background in which they operate, discuss Target's international investment and financing opportunities, review Modigliani and Miller’s capital structure theory as it relates to Target Corporation, and finally offer possible outcomes that would optimize Target's financial policy and capital
TJX Companies is one of the largest global apparel and home fashions department store chain. For instance the stores owned by TJX Companies consist of T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods, Marshalls, AJWright, and The Maxx, which are located throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. The sheer volume of transactions processed thru TJX Companies, made this breach so historic, since over 45.7 million card numbers were siphoned out of TJX Companies network and sold in the underground internet black market (Staff, 2007), usually called “data supermarkets”. In these data supermarkets credit card numbers can sell for as little as cents to as much as $10 to $20 per card number depending on quantity or source. Hackers have a complicated underground network for disseminating out this credit card data as quickly as possible, since the longer it takes for the bad guys to actually use the data the higher the chance the loss of the data would be discovered. Unfortunately the data breach at TJX Com...
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.
Although many writers accused the company for its weak security measures, the company didn't accept fault for these hacks, and it did acknowledge the customer complaints basically by saying “it's your own fault for having weak passwords.” The good news, the company reimbursed the customers for the purchases that they didn’t make. Neither the number of the victims or the amount of the money stole were declared by the company.
5. The thing that you will need to implement is the disabling of all unnecessary ports and services on the POS devices.
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.).