Target Corp Weakness Of Wal Mart Essay

Wal-Mart is a brand that is well known around the world, especially in the USA. It has gradually developed into the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart’s globalization efforts have been happening rapidly. But have they been successful in all aspects of their international expansion or not? This is the main thought that is going to be discussed in this essay. The questions I will be looking at are based on a case called “Wal-Mart takes on the world” from the book of International Business The Challenge of Global Competition eleventh edition – Ball, McCulloch, Geringer, Minor, and McNett. Questions are the following:

Headquartered in Minneapolis Minnesota, Target Corporation is one of the largest chains of retail stores in United States and Canada (Stone, 1995). Founded in 1902, the chain now has more than 360,000 employees worldwide. The company operates nearly 1925 stores out of which 1795 stores are in the US and 130 stores are in Canada (NASDAQ, 2014). The business prides itself in a diverse portfolio of merchandise that their outlets houses, ranging from dry groceries to electronics, furniture, apparel and much more. Its distribution networks make use of third party vendors, direct shipping as well as distribution centers. It also operates a successful e-store target.com which offers customers a virtual one-stop shop for their needs.

Wal-Mart and Target are both great retail stores to go and find a good bang for your buck shopping experience. After researching both companies, it appears they have the same ideas as a mission, saving the customer money. Wal-Mart Mission statement reads;

The Target Corporation is a general merchandise retailer that opened up in in 1962 under the parent company of Dayton Corporation. This parent company was renamed the Target Corporation in 2000 and are based out of Minneapolis. There are over 1,800 Target stores throughout the United States which includes Targets and Super Targets. In 2005 Target began expansion in India and in 2011 to Canada however this expansion into Canada did not fare well and all Target Canada stores were closed by 2015. According to Forbes in 2005 they we ranked amongst the highest cash-giving companies in America with 2.1% given and they donate about 5% of its pre-tax operating profit. In 2010 Target was ranked number 22 by Fortune magazine’s World's Most Admired Companies.

During the last 20 years, Wal-Mart has moved into many areas wiping out all the stores around causing people to loose jobs, slashing the tax base and causing many more disturbing problems to neighborhoods so people should stop supporting Wal-Mart for many of these reasons. Always low prices, does this sound familiar? Well this would be the slogan of the world’s most controlling company; Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart grew over the years into a 256 billion dollar company after making its name across the world in 1915. The major problem with Wal-Mart is that it maintains its own mini-economy. Some people believe Wal-Mart supports the American economy while most others hold that Wal-Mart’s global outsourcing will and has

Target Corporation is a retail chain specializing in household goods, clothing, food, and accessories at discounted prices. The retail chain’s history started back in 1902 as Goodfellows and in 1910 as The Dayton Company. Initially, the chain specialized in “furnishings, fabrics and decorations for business and other public institutions” (“Target Corporation,” 2016, p. 5). Eventually, Target went public in 1967 and on to acquire Mervyn’s in the 1970s where they became the seventh largest retailer in the United States. Target operates in the United States, where it is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota and as of January 31, 2015 Target employs over 300,000 people. “The company recorded revenues of $72,618 million in the financial year ended January 2015, the operating profit of the company was $4,535 million, [and] the net profit was $2,449 million” (“Target

Although Target provides superior quality and ideal customer services, the company is still face with risk and threats. The threats of Target consist of:

Cost Leadership is Walmart’s generic strategy. Walmart’s focus is on maintaining low prices of goods and services. Walmart is known for low prices, which is the main selling point of the business. The company keeps its prices low through cost reduction in operations.

Target a large retail corporation that operates over 1,700 stores across the United States. They also operate as an online retailer at target.com. In 2012 the retailer earned more than $73 billion dollars in revenue and grew their sales by 5.1% from the previous year. Looking at the revenue and sales growth rate it is hard to fathom that more money could not be spent to ensure that consumer data is protected as much as possible. As information security specialists one of the worst things that can happen is our network gets infiltrated and customer information is stolen. On December 19, 2013 Target released a statement stating that they have had an information

to see where the company is now with the use of a brief Swot analysis.

In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many

Target Corporation has recognized itself as one of the top retailers in the United States market on the basis of excellent service quality, customer experiences, operational excellence, strong financial position, and a wide array of product offerings. Through its high degree of service orientation at physical outlets and adoption of fair business practices, Target Corporation has become the most distinctive retailer in the eyes of its potential customers. Being one of the top-notch retailers in the United States, Target Corporation has to carefully strategize on its business operations and marketing tactics so as to keep itself in the row of competitive brands of the industry.

“Up Against Wal-Mart” by Karen Olsson, a senior editor at Texas Monthly and who’s article appeared in Mother Jones, introduces her article through the perspective of a Wal-Mart worker. She focuses on the negatives of Wal-Mart by telling the real life struggles of different Wal-Mart employees. “Progressive Wal-Mart. Really.” by Sebastian Mallaby, a columnist for the Washington Post, focuses his article on what Wal-Mart critics say and attempts to defend Wal-Mart by comparing Wal-Mart to other retailers. Even though Karen Olsson and Sebastian Mallaby both examine the negative effects of Wal-Mart, Olsson berates Wal-Mart’s unfair treatment towards employees and the unlivable wages that the world’s largest retailer provides while Mallaby

After researching a bit more about the 2013 Target hack, I found out that it ended up becoming the largest retail hack in U.S. history (Bloomberg, 2014). Target failed their customers largely in part because of one main reason. They were alerted not once, not twice, but three times of the suspicious activity, before finally reacting to it. Ironically, this hack took place just six months after spending $1.6 million for a new malware detection program (Bloomberg, 2014). Unfortunately for the 40 million people whose credit card information was taken and the other 70 million people whose address, phone numbers and other information was breached, Target failed to respond to the initial alerts from the monitoring company in an appropriate time frame

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Walmart) is engaged in the operation of retail stores, wholesale, and other various formats across the world (MintGlobal, 2016). Headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansa, Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 and the company was incorporated in 1969 (Reuters, 2016). Being the largest retailer in the world with over 2.3 million employees (MarketLine, 2016), Walmart is a multinational company with operations in over 27 countries (Reuters, 2016). Every week, Walmart gets approximately 260 million customers visiting 11,500 stores in 28 countries and its e-commerce websites in 11 countries (Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 2016). Walmart offers goods as well as private label merchandise in the following categories: grocery, entertainment, hardlines, health and wellness, apparel, and home (MarketLine, 2016). Being the market leader, the company’s revenue increases every year, with $485,651 million in the 2014 fiscal year (MarketLine, 2016).