Retail Background
All businesses that sell goods and services to consumers fall under the umbrella of retailing, but there are numerous distinctions we can take from here. To begin with, there are department stores, discount stores, specialty stores and even seasonal retailers. In some parts of the world, the retail business is dominated by smaller family-run or regionally-targeted stores, but this market is increasingly being taken over by billion-dollar multinational conglomerates like Wal-Mart and Target. The larger retailers have managed to set up huge supply/distribution chains, inventory management systems, financing pacts and wide scale marketing plans. Each retailer tries to differentiate itself from the competition, but the strategy that the company uses to sell its products is the most important factor.
Department stores are very large stores offering a huge assortment of goods and services. Discounter’s stores also tend to offer a wide array of products and services, but they compete mainly on price. Demographic are retailers that aim at one particular segment like high-end retailers focusing on wealthy individuals. During tough economic times, the discount retailers tend to outperform the others. The opposite is true when the economy is thriving. The more successful retailers attempt to combine the characteristics of more than one type of retailer to differentiate themselves from the competition. The profitability of individual companies depends on high volume sales, low-cost purchasing, and efficient distribution. Large chains dominate the market due to advantages in purchasing, distribution, and finance. The US industry is highly concentrated: the top four companies account for more than 90 percent of revenue. R...
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The idea that department stores might be losing out to retailers like Amazon is not a new one. However, the extent to which one affects the other is not entirely clear. More specialized, non-department stores may also play a role in pulling department store sales downward. Clothing store sales, for example, grew slightly, by 1.2 percent, from January 2013 to January 2014 while department store sales declined. (Census Bureau, 2014)
...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."
Moreover, despite the presence of some large chains, specialty retail markets are highly fragmented. Barnes & Noble, for example, with over 900 stores, is the largest US bookseller but has a market share of only 15 percent. With increasing transportation costs and tighter margins, there is a possibility that some large specialty retail players will consolidate assets, knowledge and outsourcing capabilities in order to generate economies of scale and scope. Key Opportunities High-end and niche merchandise: With rising disposable incomes, the demand for high-end goods is increasing, which can best be catered by specialty retail stores.
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
On December 19, 2013, Target Corporation released a statement, informing the world that their network has encountered a security breach, and over 40 million customer credit card information was stolen from nearly 2000 Target stores. The breach happens in November 2013 around Black Friday weekend, but Target security team did not discover that there had been a security breach to their system until days later. Initially, Target announced that the hacker had gained access through a third-party vendor, to the customer’s point of sales, from Target’s credit card reader, and manage to collect over 40 million
In general merchandise retailing, Wal-Mart’s primary competitors are Target and Kmart. Retail superstores such as Circuit City and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, also provide retail competition. A survey found that the majority of respondents favored Wal-Mart over stores like Target and Kmart. Respondents claimed Wal-Mart offered lower prices, better variety and selection, and good quality. The needs of consumers is an important economic feature in all competitive environments. What attributes (price, variety, quality, etc.) prompt buyers to choose one retailer over another is very important in the competitive landscape.
On January 22, 2002, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection becoming the largest retailer ever to do so in U.S. history. Most industry analysts attributed the immediate cause of the company's bankruptcy filing to a dull holiday season and stiff competition from WalMart and Target as the chain's more fundamental problem. But competition wasn't the root cause of Kmart's consistently poor performance. The real reason for Kmart's poor performance is that Kmart never had a marketing strategy. Kmart completely misunderstood its market and was positioning itself in the wrong direction. Also, on the strategic side, there are issues of where stores were located. On the whole, Kmart stores did not seem to be sited as well as the stores of the competition. Then there was the issue of technology. While Wal-Mart was becoming the relentless efficiency engine that we know today by investing in technology and streamlining the supply chain, Kmart held back. As Wal-Mart developed an infrastructure that enabled it to lower prices, Kmart slipped into a price disadvantage. This paper discusses these strategic problems that led to Kmart's poor performance.
By the 1980s, just before the rise of Wal-Mart, Kmart had become complacent. It believed it would be the king of discount retailing, now and forever. It didn't perform an accurate SWOT analysis, but to be fair, who could have seen the rise of Wal-Mart to the position of the world's number-one retailer? Still, as Wal-Mart built new stores in town after town, supported by cutthroat pricing and solid logistics, Kmart's complacency would cost them. Part of the problem was that as Wal-Mart was pouring money into information technology (IT), Kmart's IT budget continued to shrink – not just once, but several years in a row. While Wal-Mart's logistics and supply chain management got sharper, Kmart's stagnated. 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.
JCPenney is a chain of American mid-range department stores that is based out of Texas that started over 100 years ago. JCPenny has been successful for most of its time up until the last three to four years. The company is trying relentlessly to overcome the lingering effects of the makeover that former CEO, Ron Johnson, had implemented in order for the company to take a new direction in hopes of increasing sales. The new CEO, Myron Ullman, has taken a close look into the markets demographic segmentation along with the income segmentation in order to attempt to return the retailer back to its old self, which is to appeal to middle-market customers. A couple issues of major concern for the company are the dissolving of Johnson’s Boutiques, the price of their products, and overall revenue.
Since brands depend on delivering a uniform, consistent product, global brands has traditionally adopted a “one size fits all” strategy (Crothers). Wal-Mart continues to expand internationally because it relates to other U.S global brands such as McDonalds. “ McDonalds grounded on one simple idea: provide desirable food and drink at low cost.”(Crothers 130). Wal-Mart’s strategy was almost the same to begin with. What they have in common is convenience and low cost. Its fast and quick just like McDonalds’. Customers at Wal-Mart can buy anything at one place and one time. It’s a superstore and everything you need is there. Customers do not need to leave to go to another store, which is why Wal-Mart is so successful. Smaller retail companies get replaced because they don’t have a chance with competing with Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart store opening can destroy almost three local jobs for every two they cre...
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.
Target is the second leading discount store in the United States, which makes looking at market structure easy to identify. In this case Target would be considered a perfect competition market structure due to several factors. This type of marketing structure also helps to explain the financial performance that Target has and how it is able to maintain its position among the U.S.’s discount stores. By understanding more about market structure, we are able to understand how companies, such as Target, are able to be so successful.
The Indian retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced industries due to the entry of several new players. It accounts for over 10 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 8 per cent of the employment. India is the world’s fifth-largest global destination in the retail space.
As the retail industry is confronted with extraordinary challenges (Deloitte LLP, 2011), firms are facing increased competition. Porters leading authority on competitive strategy is largely accountable for the increased importance to a firm’s strategy. The retail industry is becoming highly saturated as the world is becoming smaller; this point alone makes strategy a vital component to a firms success.
On the other hand, most factors prove otherwise. The retail industry does not have high Economies of Scale to be exploited in general . Yet, it is impossible to run department stores like Metro on a small scale . A large retail space, inventory, and warehouse are necessary to host a specialized portfolio of brands and products to better attract both customers and suppliers. Heavy capital requirements and operational expen...