Bsb52415 Diploma Of Marketing And Assessment Answers

Provide context for the marketing issue including products/services provided, market position or market share

Answer:

Introduction

Background

Target Corporation is the second largest retail store operator in America after Walmart. The organization has its main corporate office in the American city of Minneapolis. It was established in the year 1902 by a person named George Dayton. The organization was first given the name of Dayton Dry Goods Company and in 1967 it changed its name to Dayton Corporation. The organization gradually pushed forward its regional expansion from the 90’s. Rather than Walmart the mentioned organization concentrates on providing quality products in cheap prices. The company segmented its retail stores and e-commerce. The e-commerce business was started by collaborating with a smaller organization named River town Trading and established an altogether different company under their control with the name of Target-Direct.

Competitive Landscape

The biggest competitor of Target is none other than Walmart which is the largest retail chain store of USA. Apart from them Sears Holding Corporation, K Mart and Amazon INC provides huge competition to the mentioned firm. Retail store market has undergone a sea of change in the last decade. Globalization has made people machines which are ready to work at any given period (Babin and Zikmund 2015). Having much less time in hand to carry on the extracurricular activities like shopping have made them to spend much less time in different places and rather buy all necessary items under one roof. The retail stores thus seem to offer practically all the things that are needed in our daily life starting from foods, clothes, apparels as well as cosmetics, stationeries and groceries. Target faces sharp competition from its competitors as retail market is a booming sector (Kaswengi and Diallo 2015).

Marketing Context

The main issue that the organization faces is the loss of customers to other retail players. The following issue seriously acts as a constraint as because the company has been facing marketing issues in the recent past. It has been losing customers due to an ineffective marketing. The aim of the report is to prepare a proper market report to achieve success and attain a competitive degree in the market.

Research Problem that needs to be highlighted

The following research is undertaken to find out the problems that Target Corporation face while carrying on its retail business. The company faces a crisis situation as it is gradually being rejected by the consumers and slowly it is losing its competitive edge in the market. There were two early researches conducted on the same topic but none of them provided a positive result (Babin and Zikmund 2015). There was an urgent need for such a research as the organization was desperate to get rid of such a crisis situation. Market Research is generally a detailed survey that is undertaken by any company to find out their position in the market. It finds out how the company is faring in the market, what are the causes that are restricting the company from any negative growths or what may be the possible solutions to them (Rallapalli et al. 2014).

Objectives of the Research

The marketing objective of this specific research is to identify the Consumer Behavior pattern of Target Corporation. The gradual fall in the market share of the company has forced the company to undertake such a market research.

Marketing Objective

The marketing objective of Target is to offer better quality services and attain the highest level of success. Target has its own set of marketing objective which provides customers with proper levels of thinking power, prepares proper strategies to sell the chain of products offered at their stores. The company also does not restrict itself from inventing and continue to apply latest technologies to maintain their market position. The main strategy of Target is to offer their customers with attractive discounts (Kaswengi and Diallo 2015). Off late the company has been experiencing a sharp fall in the sales figures as it fears that the customers are slowly turning their faces away from them (Rallapalli et al. 2014). 

Overall Research Objective

The main objective of the research is to meet the exact details of the given topic. The problem of losing out customers to the rival stores of Target Corporation is the main points that have been discussed here. As stated earlier the main aim of the research is to find out possible ways to resolve the crisis of the organizations (Piramuthu et al. 2014).

Specific Objectives

• Finding out the reasons behind the decrease in customer number.
• Finding out the strategies that the other organizations are using to capture the market
• Finding out the Micro and Macro Factors of the market
• Preparing the sample size and the type of strategies to be adapted
• Last but not the least the research should highlight the learning outcomes and recommend the possible ways to get rid of such a situation

Information of the Market

Macro Factors

Determining the Macro factors the researcher had completed a PESTEL analysis of the company.

PESTEL refers to political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors.

Political factors- Political factors of Target include the different rules that are formulated by the government. Target being a large company in the retail sector also has to pay a hefty amount of tax to the government to carry on its business. Recently the supermarket has also adopted some measures to follow the strict environmental regulations as formulated by the Government.

Economical factors- The performance of the retail sector depends largely on the economic stability of the country. Target aims to have a smooth business so that the economy stays stable.

Social Factors- The social factors is believed to be one of the most key factors to the success of Target Corporation. Social factors generally include the financial condition, needs of the people. Globalization has changed the needs of the people. Nowadays people are more aware of the different brands that are believed to be the latest trend.

Technological factors- Target Corporation started adapting technological changes from the late 90’s. This has made it one of the standout stores using latest technology to carry on their daily business. The company was the first to introduce punch system of the products. Technologies have helped the organization to achieve success.

Environmental factors- The products offered in the stores consist many which cause serious health hazards to the people. The regulations of the products are done strictly so that there is no such case. The organization has to be aware of the products that it sells to its customers.

Legal factors- Recently there was a serial burglary of certain products from one of the Target stores in Texas. This kind of burglary created shortage of some products and increased its price. The company must impose legal sanctions against such kinds of burglary.

Micro Factors

Micro factors are very much different from the Macro factor as because it involves internal assessment of the organization (Babin and Zikmund 2015).

A SWOT analysis has been done by the researcher to find out the internal problems that lie within the organization.

Numerical Factors

Market Size- Target is the second largest retail chain of USA. It has a huge customer base across the whole country. It concentrates mostly on the young generation by adapting some exclusive strategies. Most of the market of the organization is occupied by such people. The company has also a good presence globally and has recently opened stores in India and Canada.

Consumer Information

Consumer Behavior towards Product/Service

Consumer behavior is the key factor that helps the business to determine whether it runs on a success model or it earns no profit (Babin and Zikmund 2015). Consumer behavior is based on purchasing power, influence from other consumers or the financial conditions of the buyer. The retail sector of the country must have specific plans to act according to the consumer behavior. 

Consumer Attitudes towards Product/Service

Consumer attitudes are different from consumer behavior because attitude is mainly the mindset of an individual towards a particular product and thus it forms the base of the consumer behavior. A positive attitude helps the organization to have a proper reputation in the market.

Consumer Demographics

Demographics refer to some statistics that is taken into consideration while preparing a detailed market report. The researcher has also considered a number of such statistics. They are;

• Geographic location
• Income of the consumer
• Average age of the consumer
• Special Products offered to the customer

Research Design

Secondary Information

Secondary sources of information collection are the type of collecting data in which the researcher was not directly involved and the information was either received from someone else or based on some survey or government data on the particular topic. The retail store census of 2016 was one of the main sources of secondary information which was crucial to prepare this report. Another important secondary source of information came from a generalized survey of a leading credit rating agency of the country. The figures, data and charts helped to assess the organization and the problem it was facing.

Primary Information

Primary source of information is none other than the information received and collected by the researcher himself. The researcher here has collected all the primary information from the different journals and books that contained some key articles regarding the retail sector of USA (Kaswengi and Diallo 2015). The journal of Target was also one of the main sources of such information. The marketing research books on retail business written by different authors were also helpful (David et al. 2017).

Primary and secondary information both are reliable sources of information. Face to face interviews and self assessment tests are two of the best interview methods that are recommended to be used for the research. Face to face interviews help to assess the confidence level and the smartness of the people whereas the self-compilation interview tests the general aptitude and intelligent quotient of the candidates (Piramuthu et al. 2014). The questionnaire will be online as online tests is the contemporary method of tests and reduces the manual labor and helps to publish results at the earliest.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Recommended Information

As mentioned earlier face to face interviews as well as the self assessment interview are two of the best types of interview process to judge a candidate. The disadvantage of earlier methods of communication like failure to assess the candidate properly is easily solved.

Sample Design

Target Population

Target population is the people who will be included in this survey or will be interviewed. The target population is one of the most important considerations in the report as their participation is the key to the success of the survey. The target population of this particular report is the regular customers of the retail store, some occasional visitors of the store and most important are the employees and managers of the organization. The questionnaire has been provided to the target population to answer and the results will be key to the compilation of the report (Piramuthu et al. 2014).

Sampling Technique

The researcher has used stratified random sampling technique to complete the research. The particular sampling technique is used when the research needs to be completed within a short time and there are not enough financial resources (Tugrul and Cimen 2016).           

Sample Size

Sample is the smaller size of a group that is used to determine a large result by considering the larger size of the population. Sample is done mainly to save time and money as it is not possible for the researcher to target the whole range of customers or employees of the mentioned organization (Tugrul and Cimen 2016).

Timelines and Budgets

The time to complete the report was too short and thus the researcher had to hurry to complete the project. A meager time of two months was allocated for the project. The project also faced financial constraints as preparing a market report on an organization like Target Corporation needed much more financial strength. Timelines and budgets are one of the crucial factors on the success of the business (Kaswengi and Diallo 2015).

Conclusion

The research was done extensively on Target Corporation’s failure to attract customers. The research covered all the areas needed to complete perfect market identification. The micro and macro environment study of the business firm was crucial to determine the problems relating to the failure of the company. The use of primary as well as secondary information was crucial to complete the report. PESTEL and SWOT clearly chalked out the problems and recommendations regarding the company. The organization must focus on the learning outcomes of this report to attain success. 

References

Babin, B.J. and Zikmund, W.G., 2015. Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.

David, M.E., David, F.R. and David, F.R., 2017. The quantitative strategic planning matrix: a new marketing tool. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 25(4), pp.342-352.

Kaswengi, J. and Diallo, M.F., 2015. Consumer choice of store brands across store formats: A panel data analysis under crisis periods. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 23, pp.70-76.

Piramuthu, S., Wochner, S. and Grunow, M., 2014. Should retail stores also RFID-tag ‘cheap’items?. European Journal of Operational Research, 233(1), pp.281-291.

Rallapalli, S., Ganesan, A., Chintalapudi, K., Padmanabhan, V.N. and Qiu, L., 2014, September. Enabling physical analytics in retail stores using smart glasses. In Proceedings of the 20th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking (pp. 115-126). ACM.

Tugrul, B. and Cimen, S., 2016. Importance of Corporate Governance for Energy in Sustainable Development and Evaluation with Quantitative SWOT Analysis. Acta Physica Polonica A, 130(1), pp.87-89.