Key Issues, Problems And Decision Making

The aim of this paper is to highlight the strategic position of the company with an overview of its internal and external environment. The study of its strategy, design and other forces, one can easily gauge why and how target has managed to become the retail giant it is today.

Due to the economy downturn period, Macy’s and many other retailers were suffering. Fortunately, Macy’s has chosen the beneficial marketing strategy to fit the objective of business. This paper will analyze the company’s situation from its financial aspect, industry aspect, the competitive part and Macy’s marketing strategies to conclude that Macy’s could have stable profit in the next three to five years.

5. Lederer's plan to combat the threat of Wal-Mart Supercentre grocery stores turned bad on the company Consolidating its distribution centres, which supposedly made the supply chain more efficient, resulted in the departure of many of the chain's general merchandise buyers who were unwilling to move. There were numerous delays and coordination problems as suppliers had trouble shipping their goods to stores on time, and Loblaws was forced to mark it down in order to liquidate excess inventory. Expanding its inventory to general merchandise, supposedly to make a one-stop location like Wal-Mart Supercentres, was considered by many

When it comes to warehouse-style club stores, there are really only four names out there: Costco, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart and BJ’s. This paper will discuss the Costco and BJ’s. The different type of strategies being utilized by each company, the purpose of the financial statements, their Vertical & Horizontal analysis, how each financial rations ties into the two company’s strategies, Solvency & Performance for each company, a SWOT analysis of each company and finally if the expectations of the stakeholders of each company are being met.

The industry we have chosen is the department store-retail industry. Within this industry, we have chosen the department stores of JCPenney and Macy’s. We find this industry, as well as these two companies, interesting from a strategic perspective. JCPenney has recently undergone a massive strategic restructuring in regards to its pricing, brand offerings, and store layout, pushing it away from the typical department store strategy of discounts and coupons. Its new strategy has become much closer to Wal-Mart’s strategy of every day low prices. Macy’s, on the other hand, has restructured with a push from the economic

The purpose of this term paper is to discuss the similarities and differences between Talbots Inc. ("Talbots") and Chico's FAS Inc. ("Chico's"). This paper will detail the nature of each company's respective business, past financial performance, and expected future outlook. The paper is divided into two sections. The first section will discuss each company's history, business structure, and future plans independently from each other. The second section will discuss several important financial ratios and provide a detailed analysis comparing the two companies. By the end of this analysis, the reader will have a better understanding of these two retailers and the industry in which they operate.

Over the last few years, it has been predominantly evident that Sears Canada has been not performing relevant to the standards present within the competitive industry. The market of retail department stores has dramatically changed since the time the corporate entity first began. To stay relevant within today’s retail industry, Sears Canada has to change their current operations. In today's market, the power of value-driven consumer products has been dominating the industry due to their affordable prices and emphasized popularity. Sears Canada has failed to distinguish themselves within the industry as either an affordable or a high quality department store. With emerging high-end retailers like Nordstrom, Holt Renfrew, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the rise of online discount retailers like Amazon and eBay, Sears can not afford to flood both market segments. This has become a major issue that Sears Canada is facing, as the company will need to differentiate themselves from their competitors by focusing their resources in the home improvement industry.

The following pages focus on providing a strategic analysis of Sears Holding Corporation. The introduction reveals the issues that the paper addresses. The Company Presentation section reveals important facts in Sears' evolution. The Strategy Debates Section discusses theoretical issues applied to the situation of Sears. This is followed by the Strategic Decisions section that provides a series of recommendations that can help Sears improve its situation. The Implementation Challenges section provides important issues that can be considered challenges of strategic implementation.

With the exception of ROE, most financial ratios and even absolute values bear testimony to Wal-Mart’s recognition as the leader in the retailing industry. The reason behind Sears’s higher ROE can be explained by a comparison of the 3 ratios that constitute the ratio known as DuPont identity that is profit margin, asset turnover and equity multiplier. While both firms had similar profit margins, Wal-Mart’s asset turnover was 2.8 compared to Sears’ 1.1 due to the firm’s effective utilization of assets and lease agreements to facilitate revenue generation.

1. Williams-Sonoma has experienced strong growth in the past year, but this is on the back of a strong economy and in particular a strong new home market. The furniture business is strongly correlated with the strength of the real estate market. In this respect, the company's strategy is largely irrelevant, because within the next five years the real estate bubble will burst and Williams-Sonoma will suffer a major downturn in its own results as a consequence. However, this reality shows that the company perhaps lacks sufficient differentiation, and can only be expected to perform roughly in line with the housing market. It is neither outperforming competitors nor is it underperforming. W-S has sufficient differentiation within the furnishings and home products segment, and has a fairly strong brand name in the segment. The company's status as a mass-market premium company allows it to grow strongly in strong economic times, but also makes it particularly vulnerable to economic downturn, because not only do consumers redecorate at greater intervals, but they will trade down to more affordable stores when they do.

1. Use the decision-making model (page 196) presented in the chapter to map the decisions being made in these situations. Identify how, where, and why different decisions might be made.

The purpose of this report is to research and examine Toys "R" Us, the world's largiest toy chain store, so as to provide the company with strategic recommendations for future success. To throughly understand the company, the analysis is divided into multiple focus points: industry analysis, firm strategy analysis and firm financial analysis. The analysis concludes with rating that we give the company's stock as well as our strategic recommendations for the company to increase it's overall preformance.

Sears grew up to the world’s largest retailer by expanding annual sales through diversifying sale products, such as apparel, cosmetics, jewelry, electronics, household appliances, cookware, bedding and hand-tools. This article shows that Sears suffered from a cost increase in 1997, including lawsuits, credit collectibles and sales in Mexico. Besides, the flexible payment facility that Sears offered is also a reason for cost increase. These problems brought Sears with bad debt and hence decreased the cash flow. The problems of the company came from the liquid market security, so I emphasize the flowing concepts:

This paper researched the fact that the Toys “R” Us Company was displaying a weakness in financial related issues due to the lack of proper strategic planning. This made the company susceptible to many threats in the industry’s competitive environment. The research has shown that its main competitors Walmart, Target, and Amazon are functioning successfully in the industry while Toys R Us heads for bankruptcy. This research emphasizes the fact that Toys R Us has not taken steps to strategize its operations properly which resulted in a loss of revenue and opportunities in their environment. If the company does not take steps to better its strategic planning, the company will not

Linfox vision is to be the supply chain partner of choice for customers across Asia Pacific. It is also focused on earning the right to grow with selected customers as opposed to growing by increasing customer base. A prerequisite to this is alignment: Linfox had to align itself to customers in order to earn the right to grow with them to employee the pillars of business: safety, profitable growth, customer focus, investment, operations excellence, people focus, IT, and improvement to the environment. Tesco Lotus business was continually changing and evolving and the previous service contract could not have flexed to meet changing business needs. Customers started becoming increasingly frustrated and lack of transparency and alignment between the storage and distribution was witnessed due lack of coordination between the two[viii].