Essay on Target Corporation

Generating high sales volume and rapid inventory turnover by offering fee-paying members low prices on nationally branded and private-label products. Yes, it is appealing because the fees paid by members allowed for sufficient supplemental revenues while the turnover rates allowed Costco to receive cash for inventory before it had to pay many of its merchandise vendors.

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.

Costco has a simple strategy for being one of the leaders in the wholesales, which is concentrating on driving sales. If the sales of a company are good than everything else will take care of itself. While other companies such as Wal-Mart, Target and BJ’s pour money into marketing; Costco has a no-frills approach and doesn’t advertise. Costco focuses on selling fewer items which increases sale volume and

As Target Corporation is evaluated, one must observe market analysis, the current situation of the organization compared to its market performance, and SWOT analysis, to gain a better understanding of the company.

Descriptive research will be helpful to Costco in deciding to provide items to customers in individual sales. Surveys that are filled out by Costco customers can answer many of the questions as far as which items are in the most demand to be sold individually. Development of a new test instrument can be created to address these new concerns that face Costco on changing its currents sales floor to increase revenues. Through various interviews and questionnaires Costco researchers could produce a long and short list of items preferred by customers for individual sale. Then the company could start planning the implementation of all or just the short list of items as a trial to see if the venture will produce enough revenue to cover the costs of set up.

Costco has a very strong trend that announced sales of $8.78 billion in only the month of May. It is quite impressive that it has beaten its competitors Walmart and Target by a great percentage. Investors can look forward to the future in Costco outperforming the other retail stores. Costco and Sam's are very similar in the products that they sell; however Sam's Club has worse sales than those of Walmart. We may wonder what makes Costco more unique and more shoppers to shop there? The answer is that Costco does an incredible job at giving low prices. This can also be explained as Costco being an efficient company by providing the best possible prices to their customers. They have a benefit of making their profit from their membership fees, great member services, making customers experience pleasurable, and bringing the best quality brand names at the lowest price.

In terms of marketing, Costco is not as aggressive as their competitors. They essentially let the product speak for itself which seems to be working, however, as technology advances, Costco may want to

Jim Senegal and his team principal are to conquest customer gratifications. The reason why Costco is focusing on dedicate customer gratifications is because they realized that these people want to purchase decent quality products, but they don’t want to spend tremendous money on it. For example, $ 1.50 hot dog with drink is already inexpensive; however, Costco looks for lower-priced to maintain customer by producing its own hot dog factory.

Costco is one of the nation’s top three retailers and the world’s largest membership warehouse chain, Costco wholesale Canada operates about 80 membership warehouse clubs across Canada. The company never advertises, charges its 64 million members to shop there and doesn’t mark up any product more than 15 percent, even at this lowest profit margin, 15% for Kirkland private brand, the products were 20% lower than comparable to other brand products. Costco works with this business model and generating $93 billion in annual sales.

Comparison of Costco to Wal-Mart's Sam's Club." Academy of Management Perspectives, no. 3, 2006, p. 26. EBSCOhost,

When consumers think of membership wholesale businesses the first to come to mind is Costco Wholesale. The company is one of the largest wholesale warehouses that offer a vast variety of goods, some of these items are groceries, appliances, media equipment, automotive supplies, you name it Costco has it. The company is also known for pricing their goods below traditional

Still, “Costco is considered to be in direct competition with both Walmart and other additional operations. Like Costco, Walmart offers many types of goods which contain, “deli and bakery items; meat; produce; frozen foods; dry groceries; health and beauty aids; photo processing;

Walmart’s target market is lower to middle income people. These customers demand discounted products and they always shopping for families. Walmart provides customers broad product selection including electronics, home, clothing, healthy & beauty, food, etc. Walmart’s main competitors are Target and Costco, and Kroger has also become a major competitor with Walmart in recent years (Malhotra, 2016). Some dollar stores, such as Dollar General and Family Dollar were competing with Walmart (Malhotra, 2016). The company’s mission is “saving people money so they can live better” (Malhotra, 2016).

Costco's constitutional thrift makes its generous pay and health packages all the more remarkable. About 4 percent of its workers, including those who give away samples and sell mobile phones, are part-time and employed by contractors, though Costco says it seeks to ensure they have above-industry-average pay. And while Walmart, Amazon, and others actively avoid unionization, Costco, while not exactly embracing it, is comfortable that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents about 15 percent of its U.S. employees. “They are philosophically much better than anyone else I have worked with,” says Rome Aloise, a Teamsters vice president.

Around 60% of Wal-Mart’s overall net sales come from the Wal-Mart super center stores in U.S., while 25% come from Wal-Mart International Stores, and 10-12% come from Sam’s Club Stores (IBIS World, 2013). As of 2013, the leading retailers in the United States were Wal-Mart (340.46 billion dollars in sales), Kroger followed in second with 97.6 billion dollars in sales, Costco in third with 77.3 billion dollars in sales, and Target in forth with 73.65 billion dollars in sales (Statista, 2014). Other than Wal-Mart, in terms of retail products, Costco 's main competitors include stores such as Kroger, Target, Bed-Bath and Beyond, and Best Buy. Its online competitors include Amazon and eBay, while its pharmacies compete primarily with Walgreens, CVS, and Rite-Aid. ((KARTHIK SOURCE)) Thus, we can see from a market competitive standpoint, both companies are very similar and have achieved similar success in terms of warehouse distribution. These statistics illustrate how Costco and Wal-Mart have the potential to make an impact that reaches further than their own profits and losses- with such large market presence these two companies have the potential to influence the payment structure of similar companies and thus indirectly impact the social issue of living wage on a larger scale.