Swot Analysis : Target Marketing

Target Corporation is an evolving company. Target has great expectations for its future. For the year 2015, Target aims to expand its experience in order to effectively alter their customer’s expectations and shopping behavior. Target’s industry outlook starts with opening fifteen new stores for the year. The strategic store growth plans focus on localization and customer experience. Target will establish new store formats such as TargetExpress and CityTarget, while also offering new experiences, merchandising layouts and innovations in its general merchandising stores. (Target.com) The retailer’s TargetExpress is the smallest store format at approximately 20,000 square feet and aims to provide customers with effective quick trip shopping experience.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Target’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This paper will also talk about how Porter’s Five affects Target’s business decisions.

Target is considered by many experts and industry analysts as the leading retailer using distributed order management systems, including their ability to continually make the Sales &

Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013 Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013 someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system, but when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore, a third party cyber security company hired by Target alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to the 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers

Target Corporation offers its customers a vast variety of products, well also providing a service. The corporation owns or has exclusive rights to many different brands ranging from groceries to clothing. For example, some brands that can only be found at Target are Archer Farms which provides food merchandise, Merona which supplies clothing and Room Essentials which provides home goods (Target, 2015, para.2). The shopping experience that Target provides can be defined as a service. The stores shopping experience is a service, since it cannot be patented, interaction with the customer occurs, it is heterogeneous, along with perishable and time dependent and contains the package of features (Chase & Jacobs, 2013, p.9). Target is a popular consumer destination because it provides both a service and goods making it ideal for one

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.

In today’s world, especially in Canada, consumers generally want to satisfy all of their needs in a way that saves them the most time and energy. In order to meet this need, Target offers their customers the chance to buy different products that they would normally have to go to two or three different stores

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 Corporation is known worldwide as a large retail chain that brings in millions of dollars each fiscal year. The ability to remain competitive in a saturated industry could prove difficult to some retailers, but Target remains one of the leaders in the retail market. With success comes risk. Target Corporation competes against online retailers as well as “big box” stores to remain competitive.

Although Target provides superior quality and ideal customer services, the company is still face with risk and threats. The threats of Target consist of:

1.0 IntroductionTelstra Corporation is a telecommunications and information services company. It provides a range of services including fixed line services, Internet access, and business services. Telstra is the market leader in the telecommunication industry in Australia, with one of the most prominent brand names. However, its products and operating services face an increasing threat from competitors. An analysis with recommendations of Telstra marketing is necessary in order to improve its performance.

As described in figure 1, The strengths and weaknesses of the SWOT analysis are internal factors , and can be controlled directly by the organisation. Elliot, Rundle-Thiele, and Waller (2010) describes these strengths and weaknesses as those attributes of the organisation that can help or hinder in achieving its objectives.  In figure 2, the strengths portrayed for Foxtel in the SWOT analysis are vast in comparison to it’s weaknesses. In particular, the advertisement campaign has been a strength for Foxtel, despite the global financial crisis, Foxtel was able to successfully ‘sail through the storm’ with the help of a brilliant advertising campaign promising viewers to save money with Foxtel (Simon Canning, 2011) .  In contrast, the advertisements are targeted to a specific audience which has left out the aging population of 65 and over, which constitutes 13.5%  of the population as at 30 June 2010 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010), this exclusion is a weakness in its advertising campaign.  In addition to weaknesses, Foxtel has

Above all, as an extension of Target’s in-store differentiation strategy, the company needs to implement strong customer service features on all its digital platforms as well. This will include friendly, well-English speaking customer service reps available 24/7 customers can talk to about questions or technical problems with little or no waiting time.

Target Corporation has recognized itself as one of the top retailers in the United States market on the basis of excellent service quality, customer experiences, operational excellence, strong financial position, and a wide array of product offerings. Through its high degree of service orientation at physical outlets and adoption of fair business practices, Target Corporation has become the most distinctive retailer in the eyes of its potential customers. Being one of the top-notch retailers in the United States, Target Corporation has to carefully strategize on its business operations and marketing tactics so as to keep itself in the row of competitive brands of the industry.

Ultimately being reflected in its more than $72 billion in annual sales although is one-seventh of Wal-Mart’s size, Target’s number one rival.