Target International Expansion in Retail -- Target

Target International Expansion in Retail -- Target Target is one of the dominant big box retailers in the United States. The company's total sales and diluted earnings per share reached new highs of $72.0 billion and $4.52, respectively in 2012 and it invested $3.3 billion of capital in its U.S. And Canadian businesses, and also returned over $2.7 billion to our shareholders through share repurchase and dividend payments (Target Corporate, 2013).

And our full-year results were right on track with our Long-Range Plan to reach at least $100 billion in sales and $8 in earnings per share in 2017. The company has been an innovator in many key retail areas. One such innovation has led Target to be known as the "purveyor of cheap chic" as it has found clever ways to offer creative designs by partnering with different designers and artists to provide these goods at a discount to Target's customers.

They have also offered premium discounted goods through their own private label design collection. These goods are packaged as a product mix and labelled as the "Threshold" collection that is exclusively available through Target. Finally, Target has been able to provide superior customer service through its employees and offers significantly higher benefit packages than competitors such as Walmart. Another advantage that Target has been able to achieve in the market is the flexibility and the speed in which their supply chain can move.

Competitors such as Walmart rely on any U.S. retailers including inland ports accessed via rail as a core component of their supply-chain strategy. Target Stores routes majority of its imported merchandise through import distribution centers located on the East and West coasts and the company transports goods by truck or trail to regional distribution centers that supply its retail locations (Peter, 2008). This strategy has made Target's supply chain responsive any changes in consumer demand and respond quickly.

Despite all of Target's successes in the United States, the company has yet to make many international expansion efforts outside North America. However, Target has invested in a $4.4 billion dollar international expansion into Canada that has produced a disappointing financial return thus far (Peterson, 2014). There are many reasons attributed to this performance that include the fact that many of Target's goods are cheaper in the U.S.

And consumers can just order online as well as the fact that Target may have been overambitious in its launch which opened 124 stores in just 10 months. Despite the lack of initial financial success, there is still a lot of opportunity for Target to continue to snag market share from competitors like Walmart. In fact, one study actually showed that Target was now the low cost leader.

Target Canada has moved aggressively to lower prices in an attempt to gain some ground against Walmart in this country, a new study finds and an identical basket of consumer goods cost 3.9% less at Target than at Walmart in August, according to the latest pricing study from Kantar Retail (Shaw,.