It’s only been five month since Target closed all its stores and exited Canada. However, Target is sticking its toe back into the Canadian market and planning on starting its business again via online.
Will target survive this time?
sources: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/insight/target-inching-tentatively-back-into-canada-with-cross-border-online-shopping-—-at-a-price-194707264.html
In my opinion, online shopping mode will solve some of Target’s previous problems. The first one would be empty shelves. Supplying products online can perfectly solve the stock out problem. Customers won’t get disappointed as they did before while looking at the empty shelves with no products on. Another issue with Target before was the bad locations it picked. Online store mode can avoid this problem. It also saves a lot of money on for example property leases and administration fee on managing employee at different stores. It can also help with setting a lower price for their products to attract the customers because the cost is lower than before.
However, it is still hard for a company to return a market within this short amount of time. I believe that everyone will be curious about these following questions. How will Target deal with the high shipping cost plus the expensive tariff? How will Target set the price for the product for Canadians while Canadian dollar is experiencing dropping? What strategy will Target focus on applying this time? What does Target plan to do to win back its previous customers? However, Target hasn’t give out any plans other than the idea of online shopping mode. Look up at Nordstrom’s business in Canada may provides Target some great idea.
Reference: Mertl, Steve. “Target Inching Tentatively Back into Canada with Cross-border Online Shopping – at a Price.” Yahoo Finance Canada. N.p., 23 Oct. 2015. Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
