Target Corporation Swot

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Try this two-step approach on a firm of your group's choice (e.g., the firm that you use for your strategy term project) or use a firm assigned by the instructor.

SWOT Analysis of CityTarget

Target Corporation serves guests at more than 1700 stores in 49 states nationwide and at Target.com. Target is an upscale discounter that provides high-quality products at attractive prices. In August 2012, Target opened its first CityTarget in Los Angeles. Then, Chicago, Seattle and the other citied began to have CityTarget. Right now, there are eight City Target stores in the U.S. CityTarget is a new store concept, whose square footage will only be 40-60% of what a normal Target would be and the backroom storage will be less than half of the regular one.

These stores are located in densely populated urban markets in the largest cities in the U.S. And the focus target market is the Urban Customer. Comparing to the suburban customers, the urban customers have a higher annual income, more college educated, more populated in singles and have few child. What’s more, they are living in small apartment, using the public transportation and have much frequent trips to Target.

Current SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

Target has high brand recognition and high brand awareness. City population is dense; it will be easy to get people come into the store. Target has low-cost retailer, and offers private label brand, it helped the developing of the new urban format sore. Target already has stable and high community support. City Target provides one-stop shop experience that fit in the city life. Also, target has strong supply chain. And when compare to the benchmark competitor Wal-Mart, City Target has high quality product and Service.

Weaknesses:

Compare to Wal-Mart, Target has higher price perception and less U.S. saturation. And for now they only have store in North America, while Wal-Mart goes international. Another weakness is the poor recent publicity

Opportunities:

Target is expecting to enter new market segment, build brand equity and target product offering.

Threats:

Target has the concern of regulation and laws. And competitor offers similar concept, like Wal-Mart has Wal-Mart Express. City Target offers similar products categories with drugstores. Also, consumer behavior changes a lot. The reduced inventory and less space compare to regular store is another problem. And people did complain about the parking issue. Distribution limits is also a threat.

Basic on our research, Target is working on some of the serious problems; they will change the product assortment, the layout and use the suburban store as their secondary inventory. And since the market is dynamic, the puritanical SWOT will be different from the current one. And the most changes are the opportunities and the threats.

Puritanical SWOT Analysis

Opportunities:

Target will go further to adept the market, so new market segment will increase the market share and products base on segmentation will be accomplished.

Threats:

For solving the threats, they will reduce the assortment based on customer preference, and develop utilizing excess capacity and calculated distribution centers. For parking issue, they will choose careful location planning with emphasis on guest access. For distribution, they will build smaller fleet to accommodate smaller docking and product offering.