Advanced Strategy Case: Target

Instruction

    Target Corporation (Target) was founded in the early 20th century. The company which was headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota was called Dayton Dry Goods Company when it created. The company was a department store in the beginning. In the 1960s, the leadership put forward a new idea to be discount store. In order to strengthen the relationship with its customers, the company transformed from a family-owned department store retailer to a mass market retailer. Then the first Target retail store opened in 1962 in Minneapolis (Target, 2018). Next, Target had a series of expansion plans in American market. According to Target (2018), in 1966, Target opened a store in Denver area, which was the first store outside of Minnesota. Then the company opened its first store in the Pacific Northwest in 1988 and in the Southeast in 1989. Not only that, Target opened eleven stores in the Chicago area in one day in 1993. In 2001, Target already had 1,000 stores. The company is the second largest retailer in the United States, second only to Walmart.

    Walmart has always been a competitor since Target’s opening. While Target's positioning is to sell high quality products, Walmart's positioning provides low-priced products. However, when Walmart began to expand overseas markets in the 1990s, Target decided to enter the Canadian market in 2011. In order to expand its global business, Target's leadership decided that entering the Canadian market was the best choice. In 2011, Target purchased 189 Zellers Inc. sites in Canada and planned to renovate two thirds of them as future Target stores (Target, 2018). However, because of the wrong strategy, the plan later failed.

The CEO's Strategic Decision: Entry into Canada Market

Introduction

Information technology which brings convenience to people can help people in many ways.  For instance, an enterprise uses technology in its business model or organizational architecture to help its development.  Even though people have become used to the use of technology applications, technology is not omnipotent.  Fonseca (2015) shows when people benefited from technological innovations, they are often negligent that technology might fail.  Information security is an important part of how an enterprise uses information technology in its business.  If an enterprise does not pay attention to its information security management, this can lead to external threats to its information system.  Hackers attacking Target is one case.

Target Corporation (Target) which has 1,793 stores in the U.S. (Target, 2016) is one of the largest retail chains in the U.S.  Target sells articles for daily use, such as clothes, food, household appliances, and furniture. In order to give its customers more services, Target also has online business.  Now, Target has 341,000 employees worldwide (Target, 2016). 

Problem

Abstract

Because the information age has come, the industry has changed.  The electronics industry has become one of the most important industries in the world.  The use of electronic products is increasingly close.  Since the computer was invented, it has become a part of peoples’ lives.  Now, almost every family has a computer and every business uses a computer or a laptop in the office.  Therefore, the fact that the computer industry is one of the popular industry cannot be too exaggerated.  There are many famous computer manufacturers in the world.  The purpose of this paper is comparing two companies in computer industry.  The two companies I selected for the industry analysis paper are Apple, Inc. (Apple) and Dell, Inc. (Dell), the two biggest computer companies, which are part of the technology and communications industry.

In this paper, the analysis will follow by the six areas:

• What is each company’s current competitive strategy?
• What are they doing to improve their current competitive position?
• What likely moves or strategy shifts will they make?
• Where is each company most vulnerable?
• What competitive moves will provoke the greatest and most effective retaliation by each company?
• Would you recommend the continuation or modification of each company’s current strategy?

Key words: Computer Industry, competitive strategy, vulnerable