This last summer I vacationed in Kona, Hawaii and visited a Macy’s store expecting to find the usual Seattle and California merchandise. To my surprise, the entire store was “Hawaiianized”; the store mainly consisted of bathing suits, sun hats, sunglasses, Hawaiian jewelry (e.g. pooka shells), and the tacky tourist Hawaiian shirts. I then remembered reading an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that revealed Macy’s new marketing strategy to “cater to regional tastes”.
Macy’s, one of the oldest and most established department store chains in the United States, realized there had been a decrease in customer spending since four years ago. As a result, Macy’s came up with the “My Macy’s” program in order to gain back their popularity and profitability. The “My Macy’s” program is a strategy to modify and customize store merchandise to individual markets. For instance, the store realized that there was a “demand for separately sold pieces of women suits in Washington D.C.”,so stores in D.C. adjusted merchandise for their clients.
This realization helps the company profit by targeting different demographics (specifically by location) so that they can maximize on their wants and needs in order to become more profitable and popular again. Moreover, it also helps increase their profit by stocking up on items that will be more appealing to customers in a designated area as well as eliminating excess and irrelevant inventory from that store.
According to various sites (e.g. Reuters) the “My Macy’s” program has been viewed as a success in raising the company’s shares and profits.
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