Target Back-To-College Essay

Every year during the back-to-college season, millions of students across the US purchase countless school supplies for their upcoming semesters. How each student does their shopping is different, with many doing more traditional in-store shopping, and others getting their supplies through newer e-commerce channels using company’s websites. One of the biggest issues back-to-school vendors such as Target face today is competing against online retail giants like Amazon, especially when back-to-school and office supplies is one of Target’s smaller revenue segments. As a result, our goal is to help Target drive these back-to-school sales up, as well as create incentives to bring students back in-store as opposed to going on competitors’ online

Ease of shopping is a major factor in what drives customers to do their back-to-school shopping online rather than traveling to a physical store, and our group has come up with an idea for Target to definitively overcome this struggle and beat out online competitors for back-to-school. To compete with the simplicity of online back-to-college shopping and bulk orders, Target needs to implement a competitive strategy that incentivizes customers to shop more easily at physical stores. Our solution to this problem is the idea of implementing specialized back to school “bundle packages” at both Target stores and the university pop-up shops. In doing so, the 8 local Target stores will work with the university to decide products for individualized packages based on students’ grade and major, and subsequently sell them at the mentioned locations. Each major and grade may require a different set of general products, which is why the program would provide a variety of specialized bundles to grant the best customer experience possible and meet every student’s unique needs. In doing so, Target will eliminate the hassle of in-person shopping that generally takes a greater amount of time, and which requires customers to physically navigate through the store to find products. Creating all-in-one packages will generate customer foot traffic to both the pop-up shops and Target stores during back-to-school season, since students will be able to come into the respective location and promptly select the packages tailored to their needs based on grade and major. As we all know, effective marketing must focus on a broad range of areas and demographics, and Target struggles in establishing a marketing mix directed towards students and