Target Corporation is the second largest discount store retailer in the United States following Walmart. Target provides high-quality, trendy merchandise at logical prices. As of today, Target has more than 1800 retail stores and 38 distribution centers in the United States. The first official store was opened in 1962 in Roseville Minnesota and have thrived every since. I will be analyzing Target’s financial statements and communicating the results to our decision makers (Target 2017).
I visited Costco and Target, and the fie criteria I chose to asses the stores were cleanliness, store decor, location of returns desk, selection of goods, and size of goods sold. At Costco the floors were clean and shiny, yet they displayed only shined concrete. At target, the floors had a white tile on the main walkways and carpet where people normally stop to look at clothes. In regards to store décor, target had lots of decorations and pictures on the wall to create an inviting environment. On the other hand, Costco had industrial, warehouse like shelving with products on the bottom.
Target Corporation makes money by offering quality products and services at discounted prices. It also ensures its stores have all the products that the consumers require. This way, they are able to target and meet the needs of their loyal customers. By helping the consumers cut expenses, the company also ensures that they keep coming back for more. The company sells its products across the United States through stores, online purchases and mobile devices (Rowley 2003).
The Dayton Company opened the doors of the first Target Store in 1962 in Roseville, Minnesota, as the name had been chosen to differentiate the new discount retailer from the Dayton Company’s more upscale stores. The name had begun to flourish and by the year 2000, Dayton Hudson had officially changed its name to Target Corporation. By 2005 Target had become a major retailing powerhouse with $52.6 Billion in revenues from 1,397 stores in 47 different states, with analysts expecting capital expenditures would continue at a level of 6%-7% of revenues, which equates to about $3.5 billion in 2006. In contrast with Wal-Mart's focus on low prices, Target’s strategy was to consider the customer’s shopping experience. Target referred to its customers
In recent years, Target has taken a hit in sales and market share. There are many reasons for this as there always are in the business of retail. With the growth of online retail sites, like Amazon, Target has often found itself having to reanalyze its brand image and redefine how it fits into the emerging market players. According to Safdar, Target’s primary goal is to increase foot traffic back into the stores (2017). Since this is such a big deal to Target, a mix of traditional advertising and social media marketing is the best choice to implement.
It was possible to estimate the retailer’s sales on that critical day even before Macy’s itself had recorded those sales. Rapid insights like this can provide an obvious competitive advantage to Wall Street Analysts and Main Street Managers. iii. Variety: Data can from millions of different sources. Text, image, audio, video, readings from sensors, etc are all
Market Segmentation: To be of value market segments must be measurable, substantial, accessible, differentiable, and actionable (Kotler & Keller, 2012). Segmentation of demographics for Costco is vast as the current product offerings include all genders, ethnicities, incomes. age groups, and social classes. When considering demographics, it is important to consider the average or typical characteristics of the target market. As mentioned earlier the target market or focus for this company is supplying the small- to medium-sized business and targets the middle- to high-end consumer with its private label brand Kirkland Signature.
With the analytics of costumer behavior, they were able to shift their marketing efforts to the trends of their costumers and they are now having great success. Another example from Capture Code Inc. is Perry’s Ice Cream. This company was already doing well with sales but they aspired to reach a broader audience. Although Perry’s ice cream was already collecting data, the data wasn’t enough to predict consumer trends, by acquiring the right BI they were able to get enough data and use it advantageously.
Special Report CMPE 274 – Business Intelligence Fall 2014 Individual Report: Business Intelligence in Online Retail Submitted To: Prof. Severo D’Souza Submitted By: Gauri Dasgupta (009425156) Table of Contents Background 3 History 3 Future Trends 4 Who are the players? 5 Recommendation systems and analytics of data 5 Amazon 6 Google shopping express 6 Technology 8 Architecture 8 Core Technologies 9 Component BI Technologies: 9 Skill Sets 11 People 12 Skills Required: 12 Payscale: 13 Why companies need these technologies and how are they essential?
What’s possible, How do we stay ahead?” At this stage Analytics has become a central theme and focus of the enterprise — how it operates, how it makes decisions. Analytics is embedded into the core business
By using analytics retailers can use the information collected to adjust their current approach
A. Commit initial efforts to customer-centric outcomes It is imperative that organizations focus big data initiatives on areas that can provide the most value to the business. For most retailers, this will mean beginning with customer analytics that enable them to offer better, more finely tailored products based on a better understanding of customer needs and predicted behavior patterns. Retail organizations can use customer insights to generate enhanced products, improve brand performance, drive customer loyalty, adjust pricing and improve customer satisfaction.
Many times people understand the ideas of analytics but get frustrated in communicating with others because they are missing the framework of analytics that helps organize and communicate the broad range of analytic processes and uses to business audiences. The framework of analytical ideas is to take four kinds of processes and organize them into categories. The categories are Descriptive Analytics, Diagnostic Analytics, Predictive Analytics, and Prescriptive Analytics. Below is a summary of the stages of data analysis: • Descriptive analytics: What happened? • Diagnostic analytics: Why did it happen?
My 15+ years of experience as an accountant, auditor, and finance manager have underscored how data and analytics are crucial in forecasting, predicting, and making critical, informed business
They all are eager to take advantages that these solutions may bring. This is true for retail sector as well. Big data analytics has the ability to provide actionable insights retail sector has been looking for long time. These insights can be utilized as a guide for internal decision-making in a wide variety of capacities. Big data analytics’ influence is both growing and expanding into various sectors.
