By the 1970’s Target was adding electronic cash registers to track sales and stock and to assist in customer service. Each year annual shopping events were held to benefit people with disabilities and senior citizens.

The 80’s proved to be a decade where Target continuously expanded and added services such as electronic scanning throughout the nation which helped pave their way into the 90’s.

In the 90’s Target launched its own, personal credit card, Target Greenland Store, guest registry, national bridal registry and introduced it’s first SuperTarget store; a Target store that combined the finer points of the Greenland Store with a grocery store and other special service, it also has it’s own on-line store, Target.com, which enables it to meet the needs and demands of a vaster market. Target is competing with the likes of JC Penny’s, Wal-mart, Kohl’s, Ka

In 1999, Target announced that it would be opening 36 stores in 20 states by 2002 with 16 of these new stores being Super Target Stores. These stores will be built throughout the United States from Alabama to Wisconsin. Our Target Store opened up in November of 2002, poised to take advantage of the holiday season, and has been readily accepted by the general population. An advantage to our Target Store is that it is located right outside of Great Northern Mall, close to Route 481, Route 81 and Route 31 which provides greater ingress/egress to a vaster shopping population, a population that wants a wider variety of goods that are more affordable.

If Target changes their marketing mix, I feel that they can expect very limited reactions from their closest competitors. Target is close to their competitors, but essentially each competitor is in a league of their own as far as what customers expect from them and what they are selling. One cannot expect to walk into Target and find the same name brands and/or quality that one would find in Kauffman’s. Therefore, I feel that neither the lower end stores or higher end stores in our area would feel threatened by Target unless Target changed their prices and fell into the areas of Wal-mart or JC Penny’s. Hence, the current structure of the industry really doesn’t affect the competitive forces.

Sociocultures are ever changing too. As stated before, especially in this time of recession, people want more for their dollar and are more conscientious about each penny they spend. The sociocultural forces that seems to be present now is that more people tend to be moving away from city life and moving into the suburbs. Our Target store has planted itself right on the edge of urban, suburban and rural areas. This location, is an advantage for Target. It places Target at an accessible location near a major highway, next to one of Syracuse’s larger malls and basically in a hub of activity. Bus lines constantly run the strip of roads and highways on which Target is placed. The interstate 81 provides easy accessibility for all travelers to easily travel to and from Target. And being that our store is placed right next to Wal-mart and Great Northern Mall, potential customers have a greater chance of finding that one item that is “just right”, within both their ideas of what they want and what they are willing to spend.

Some topics in this essay:
Central York, Technological Forces, Northern Mall, Roseville Minnesota, Target Credit, Target Stores, Social Security, Wish List, United Target, Greenland Store, target store, jc penny’s, credit card, holiday season, target stores, spend money, reluctant spend money, regulatory forces, stock warehouses, on-line store, people reluctant spend, forces unknown, legal regulatory forces, forces unknown irrelevant, super target stores,