Target Memo

Target: Responding to the recession

to: | MAry Smith, Administrative Assistant to Greg Steinhafel |

from: | JOhn Bonnett |

subject: | Target Corporation strategic consulting engagement |

date: | December 11, 2014 |

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BACKGROUND:

On May 2008 to Match 2009 Target’s stock price dropped to 50 percent while Wal-Mart’s declined to 16 percent. Also during the recession year the housing market declined which cost Target’s sale of home-related items to dropped 20 percent and Wal-Mart to about 5 percent. Steinhafel responded to the economic downturn with strategies to help Target in the economic downturn by implementing three main strategies: cutting costs, focusing marketing messaging on the value aspect of Target’s 15-year-old “expect more pay less” brand promise and lastly an aggressive approach to enhance the foot content in stores, which intended to drive frequency of shopping trips.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Steinhafel’s strategies to keep Target alive during the recession were pretty good but I believe that he needed to expand more on the idea of cutting costs, the enhancement of the grocery and especially on their logo “expect more, pay less”. For my recommendation in order to stabilize the economic downturn and get Target back and running in the Competition I want to focus on two recommendations that I believe would help Target in their battle for recession. My recommendation are to expand the grocery line and mainly focus on the private label brands of Target and secondly develop a Mobile App and focus on the online ordering and coupons in order to drive consumers to shop more online and get the word out that Target is a high quality product but we do offer it for less as or logo brand promotes “expect more, pay less. I will mostly focus on the expansion of the grocery because that’s where most of their revenue will come from and briefly talk about Mobile app.

GROCERY LINE:

The reason for the expanding the Grocery line is that according to...