Dollar Tree Analysis

There are several different types of stores within the discount retail industry, and for comparison's sake, the industry is further broken into many segments. DG is in the market segment known as the dollar store category. As a result, competitors such as Wal-Mart are in the same industry but not the same peer group. Comparisons will be made throughout this report to Wal-Mart and other big firms because they tend draw some of the same customers.

the superior tracking capability of RFID chips would reduce shrinkage and other forms of loss by up

The daily routine at Dollar Tree Inc. is very basic and is usually minimally manned. Problems such as stray items, wrong inventory and cash drawer mismatch arise due to employees not having the proper training.

Low product differentiation and economies of scale: There isn’t much product differentiation at play in the retail industry as there are well known manufacturers whose products are offered for sale, which leaves price to compete on. Current well established retailers with thousands of stores enjoy the economies of scale to control their cost that a new entrant might not be able to replicate after immediately entering the industry.

The evolution of Wal-mart from the early 1960s to the present day has set a benchmark that few can achieve. Wal-mart executives have been successful nationally as well as globally. The knowledge and expertise in economics have made Wal-mart a global giant. The research completed is the final recommendations by the members of research team C and will address questions regarding global competition and issues of the organizations ability to expand or reduce current operations.

If we analyze Dollar Store, we will see that it has established over 140 stores across Canada since its inception in 1998. As it has been considerably increasing its market reach across Canada; they are considered a direct competitor to Dollarama. On the other hand, Great Canadian Dollar stores are extending their reach in eastern Canada. Additionally, they are very present in the community by offering both charitable and communal support. At last, Dollar Tree is a growing chain of discounted retail stores in the United States. It operates over 4400 retail stores in 48 states of the US and in Canada. Thus, they are ready to expand their customer base into Canada. Also, Dollar Tree offers a much broader range of products compared to Dollarama, for example frozen foods and dairy items. As such, there is a very high competition in the discounted retail stores industry. However, in such a high competitive environment, Dollarama is still able to open over 150 stores in the past four years only. Also, considering their stock trend, their share price had increased from 25$ to 56.90$ per share in only one year. That represents a growth of 128% in a single year. We can conclude that their shares are in demand in our current market environment. Thus, we can assess that they are very well positioned in today’s competitive environment.

Our group performed an analysis of Dollar General’s external and internal environment, which included a Porters Five Forces breakdown. Those findings as well as analysis on the company’s financial statements formed the basis for our recommendations. We considered several alternative growth strategies for Dollar General to implement. Those strategies are, international expansion, continued domestic expansion, internal improvements, extending services, and taking the company private. We concluded that the most beneficial direction for the company is to go private thereby relieving pressure to meet short-term objectives. We also believe that Dollar General can

Family Dollar’s retail strategy will work in both good and bad economic times. The company’s mission: is to provide our customers with a compelling place to shop, our team members with a compelling place to work, and our investors with a compelling place to invest. Our vision is to be the best, small format convenience and value retailer serving the needs of families in our neighborhoods. (Family Dollar 2012 Annual Report) During the economic downturn, Family Dollar reevaluated the company’s goals. One of the goals the company will be refocusing on will be to build customer

The internal analysis is very important in a company. Just like the external analysis, both of these analysis help to determine strategies. The Internal analysis involves the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats of a company (Pearson, 2014). Dollar Tree has many strengths but they also have some weakness too. If Dollar Tree would use the data that they have from their internal analysis they could turn a lot of their weakness into strengths. But we will talk about their weaknesses later. The more strength a company has the better. One of Dollar Tree’s strengths would be that they acquired Family Dollar in 2015. This is a huge strength for Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree has many opportunities to overtake the dollar store market. They only need to keep inquiring their competitor’s stores. Strength for Dollar Tree is their strong financial performance. They are the largest dollar store in the market. Dollar Tree has a $15.5B Annual net sale that grew to 80.2% in 2015 and exceeded $15 billion for the first time in Company history. Now to Dollar Tree’s weaknesses, this would be their low inventory turnover ratio. In 2016, Dollar Tree reported that their inventory turnover ratio was 3.8 (Canadean, 2016). This is a high number. This is saying that they have more than enough of inventory in store that is not being bought by their customers. This is really money that is setting in their warehouse or stockroom and it just sitting and is not being used. This is bad for Dollar Tree.

The Dollar Tree Cooperation provides inbound, import, domestic transportation and outbound transportation services to 48 locations in the United States and five locations in Canada (Dollar Tree Inc., 2014). Using 10 distribution centers, the Dollar Tree is

Another important aspect is a limited selection of goods. Whereas Walmart or Target may have upwards of 150,000 items sold in their stores. Costco will have less than 4000. They also have their own private label which is only equal to 15% of what they carry in the stores, but it equals out to over 30% of their total sales currently. Another aspect of the product selection is that instead of buying many

The Dollar Tree brand of stores has been around since 1986, when Douglas Perry, Macon Brock, and Ray Compton founded the chain as a compliment to their other business, K & K Toys (Parnell, 2014). Through the years, Dollar Tree has acquired several different dollar store and low-end retail chains to grow their business to over 4000 stores (Shetty, 2010). One of the first and most strategic moves that the company made was to shift away from carrying closeout merchandise and to become more of a traditional variety store with a wide variety of basic goods all priced at a dollar or less. To accomplish this change, the chain had to discontinue their current purchasing strategies and had to begin buying directly from manufacturers to change the type of merchandise that they had available for consumers. The second major strategic move involved changing the location of where stores are usually located. Up until this point, the stores had been being in enclosed malls. With this change,

Macy's Inc. is one of the nation's largest and well known department store chains. Started over 150 years ago, Macy's has continually generated excellent returns for its shareholders and employees. Currently, in the midst of a global recession, Macy's has generated huge profits with same store sales increasing 5.3% year to date. In 2012 same store sales increased 4.6% in the month of February alone (Macy's Inc., 2012). In fact, throughout the duration of 2012, Macy's is projecting even larger profits for its underlying business operations. Even though Macy's has experienced success with both its assortments and brand, its competitors haven't faired so well. Sears, due in part to part to a lackluster holiday season, has been forced to close nearly 120 locations to generate excess liquidity in an effort to shore up its balance sheet (Isidore, 2011).Other competitors who cater specifically to the middle class consumer have also lost significant amounts of market share as consumers trade down due to the economy. This performance is primarily due to the core functions and operations of the business. Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Macy's excels at these forms of management, which has allowed the company to perform at a higher level relative to its peers in the industry.

The main objective of a low-cost provider is to achieve a lower overall cost than its main competitors and rivals by means of underpricing (Gamble, 93). This is also known as price advantage in order to attract customers. Companies that use this strategy will achieve high sales volumes while striving for low cost margins. For example, Wal-Mart is known to have considerable low prices that attract a broad spectrum of customers. People who shop at Wal-Mart are familiar with their “Rollback Prices” which focus on the idea of everyday low prices that are sold at a far cheaper rate than its main competitors. They are able to sustain these prices because of a successful supply chain market. Many of the products they sell are from foreign and domestic markets that focus on a lower price demand. This allows Wal-Mart to sell their products at lower prices at a high volume. Basically, they buy a huge quantity in volume in order to achieve a lower price to gain a higher profit.

Competition among retailers is aggressive, as the demand side of the industry is driven by consumers who expect to get the best value for their money. “Competitive advantage is anything a company has, or does better, that customers value but the competition cannot match” (Romero, 2005). Walmart has a sustainable competitive advantage over other retailers, largely due to their centralized focus of cost leadership and differentiation strategies.