Target Groceries Corporation
Group Blog
Target Groceries Company is a retail store in the United States of America that has struggled over time to fully establish in the market. According to its financial statements, the Company has not been meeting its targets over the last five years. Target Groceries is currently facing stiff competition from both the offline and online giants such as Walmart Neighborhood Grocery, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Blue Apron, and Amazon Fresh, among others. The Target Groceries store has employed several value market techniques to win the loyalty of the customers, but it is like everything has not been fully settled. This blog has analyzed the value target of Target Groceries. The blog applies both primary and secondary sources to analyze the value of Target Groceries.
Defining the Value of Target Groceries
Target Groceries is a retail store of groceries in the United States of America. The Grocery retail industry is one of the most competitive industries in America. For a company to have mega sales, it has to employ various techniques that the customers can easily adapt. The selling formats which majority of the companies in this industry are using is the door to door delivery or online shopping (Gereffi & Fernandez, 2011). In modern society, it does not mean that the grocery company would record-high sales because it is situated in the densely populated area. Technology has moved the stores online, and the customers enjoy most where there are good services and quality products. For that matter, Target Groceries has failed to address some of the basic values as they are applied by the giant competitors to win the loyalty of the customers.
Targets’ Value Equation
The Targets’ Value equation is determined on the quality, service, and the cost of the products. It is represented as
V= Q (Quality) + S (Service)
C (Cost)
From the equation, it can be seen that V stands for the value of the Target Corporation, Q stands for the quality of the products they operate with, S stands for the services provided, and C stands for the cost that the Company incurs. The equation can be defined that the Company is selling the quality products to the consumers (Mudambi & Puck, 2016). Quality products such as fresh vegetables, fresh milk, and fresh fruits are always available for the customers to purchase. In addition to that, they give quality services such as packaging, after-sales services, and the door to door services.
According to the case study of Target Groceries, it can be said that the Company has been slow in adapting to the current technology. Target Corporation opened as a store in 1962 by Dayton Hudson. The Company allowed for the self-selection whereby the customers interacted with the products before they purchased them. From 1992 to 2001, the Company opened around one thousand stores all over the country, meaning that it was growing significantly. In 2000, the Company changed the name from Dayton-Hudson to Target Corporation, and it gained a lot of market by then. For the next ten years after the Company was branded Target Corporation, the Company started going down a day to the other. They had a chaotic display of the priced merchandise in unattractive settings. It was still during the 2000s when technology was advancing at an alarming rate (Wang, 2020). During then, many groceries took advantage of the technology to advance its services. In short, the Company has been failing because of the poor display of the products, failing to adapt to the modern technology of services, and the pricing techniques.
Target Corporation is currently offering products such as milk, bread, laundry detergents, fresh vegetables, and fruits. Its target customers are households since it mostly sells the household products to the customers. Target Cooperation has also started its operations online. At first, the Company faced a challenge of online selling when its website was hacked by malicious people. A lot of the information of the Company was leaked out, and the competitors used it as a competition tool. This made many customers lose their loyalty to the Company (Wang, 2020). The Target Corporation is also offering after-sales services such as packaging and also the transport facilities. The Company has also recently started taking the goods to the doorstep of the customers. The Company has also incorporated both the traditional methods of marketing and the modern ones to market its products. Some Target stores have shut down because of the competition, while others are recording poor sales (Wang, 2020). For that matter, the Company should address things such as the display of the products, customer interactions, online shopping, diversifying its products, and employing the digital methods of advertisements as a way of surpassing the competitors.
Listening to the shoppers
In order to understand the Targets’ Corporation market, I carried out research that targeted on type of customers that the company gets on a daily bases and what the customers expect from the Company. I used research techniques such as interviewing, watching, and also sample watching. From the interview, I was able to ask the questions related to the products which the Target Corporation is offering to the shoppers. Out of the ten people I interviewed, seven of them claim that the services of the Company were poor in the five years, but now they are promising (Villamayor et al., 2015). The seven customers said that previously, they could order the products they wanted and take more than two days before they have them. They also claim that sometimes when you visit the stores, you could get confused about what they would purchase because of the poor display of the products. The other three interviewees were saying that the Company has ever been good since they started shopping with them.
Apart from interviewing, I also took some time to watch the reactions of the customers online. The Company gives the room for the customers to send feedback after they are served. Out of the ten feedbacks I watched from the customers, six of them were complaining about delaying of the products after they order them. They also complained about the possibility of getting the goods which are not of similar quality as it had been displayed. The other four were saying that everything was alright.
From my primary research about the Target Corporation about its products to the customers, I can conclude that the Company has not fully settled the cases concerning their displays and quality. For that matter, I would recommend that if the Company wants to become competitive enough, they should ensure that the customers get what they ask for in terms of quality, and also within the time they wanted it. The Company has the chance to increase its market share it the management puts in place the dimensions explained in the blob.
Appendixes
Figure 1: Financial Statement (Wang, 2020)
Figure 2: Target Corporation Segment (Wang, 2020)
References
Gereffi, G., & Fernandez-Stark, K. (2011). Global value chain analysis: a primer. Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness (CGGC), Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
Mudambi, R., & Puck, J. (2016). A global value chain analysis of the ‘regional strategy’perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 53(6), 1076-1093.
Villamayor-Tomas, S., Grundmann, P., Epstein, G., Evans, T., & Kimmich, C. (2015). The water-energy-food security nexus through the lenses of the value chain and the institutional analysis and development frameworks. Water Alternatives, 8(1), 735-755.
Wang, X, (2020), Target Corporation: The Grocery Business in the Bull’s Eye