Macy's

Although most of Macy's major competitors have mission statements that clearly position their firms to their customers, Macy's falls in a landscape without clear long-term vision, and is failing to adapt to a rapidly evolving retail landscape. Macy’s attempts to capture one of the largest market segments in mass-market retail by tailoring its products and services to middle-age upper-class women; however, this customer segment only accounts for 22% of the total capturable market, and Macy's lacks a competitive advantage to differentiate its brand. As retail continues to move towards technological advancements and a more millennial customer base, Macy's needs to evolve to remain competitive in the market, lending several opportunities to further

Many of the same brands, such as Nautica, Ralph Lauren, and Michael Kors, which were once only held at department stores such as Macy’s are now held at discount retailers such as TJX Companies (Marshalls and TJMaxx,) and brands that are truly upper-scale are more frequently shopped at more premium retailers such as Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus. Therefore, Macy’s is between two major markets and is unable to capitalize on either. The Macy’s company would strongly benefit from a repositioning of its brands - maintaining Bloomingdales as a premium retailer to compete with Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, but repositioning Macy’s as a discount retailer with prices to compete with TJX Brands, using overstock merchandise from Bloomingdale's at attractive prices to capture a portion of the discount market share, allowing for Macy's to enter the expanding under-25 age group, as competitive prices with fashionable brands would attract this audience, while maintaining its older age group with many of its current offerings at a discounted price. According Jeff Gennette, Macy’s CEO, 10% of Macy's 43 million customers account for half of its sales. Two-thirds of those core customers also shop at off-price retailers, but Macy’s ability to capture them back is currently limited, and the inception of this

Given that fashion trends are constantly evolving, inventory becomes outdated quickly in the industry, evidencing that Macy’s offerings are not fully aligned with fashion trends and customer desires. Macy's should further invest in trend analysis research to identify future trends ahead of mass-market demand, ensuring that when Macy’s purchases inventory, it will will be eventually be monetized. Beyond research, inventory turnover can further be increased and fit to customers can be further defined through the use of technology. Macys should adopt digital pricing systems such as those present at Kohl's to fluidly update prices on items with higher inventory levels to match equilibrium prices with their current supply and demand, ultimately aiding the corporation to move stale inventory, further increasing the company’s inventory turnover ratio and revenue on capital. Macy’s would additionally benefit from enhanced inventory management through a tailored customer experience, much like the reverse engineered search engine optimization processes of Amazon. Amazon tracks the purchasing and search habits of consumers to ultimately analyze their shopping and spending habits to recommend new potential