Question

Target Corporation is the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States, behind Walmart, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Founded by George Dayton and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company was originally named Good fellow Dry Goods in June 1902 before being renamed the Dayton's Dry Goods Company in 1903 and later the Dayton Company in 1910. The first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota in 1962 while the parent company was renamed the Dayton Corporation in 1967. It became the Dayton-Hudson Corporation after merging with the J.L. Hudson Company in 1969 and held ownership of several department store chains including Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshall Field's, and Mervyn's.

Target established itself as the highest-earning division of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation in the 1970s; it began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed the Target Corporation in 2000 and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive and highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Canadian subsidiary in the early 2010s but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States.

As of 2017, Target operates 1,834 stores throughout the United States. Their retail formats include the discount store Target, the hypermarket Super Target, and "flexible format" stores previously named City Target and Target Express before being consolidated under the Target branding. Target is often recognized for its emphasis on "the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers," whereas its rival Walmart more heavily relies on its strategy of "always low prices.

Target Corporation decide to start its discount store in Saudi Arabia. The Target management hired you as Marketing Manager for its Saudi Arabia operation. You have to establish marketing department starting from the Analysis of market, formulate overall marketing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics within the context of an organization's business, mission, and goals designing and planning the entire function.

To establish the marketing function of Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia, you have to formulate the followings:

Vision

Mission

Business objective.

Product and type of services.   

Develop a marketing Plan for Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia. Define the SWOT analysis for Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia.

Analyze the Micro and Macro environment of the Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia.

How Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia will establish, develop, and enhance mutually beneficial relationships with customers? Discuss all the activities to establish, develop, and maintain customer sales?

Identify the various consumer decision processes for the Target Corporation customer?

How will you establish the market research for making better decision to establish and enhance the marketing?   

How Target Corporation, KSA will evaluate market segments and choose the best ones to serve? How it will create value propositions to meet the requirements of target customers?

How Target Corporation, KSA will manage all of their products and services? What are the steps in the best development process for new products?

Assignment Workload:

The word count for this assignment must be between 2500 to 3000 words.

Answer 1

The consumer decision process which is being utilized by the consumer of Target is as below:-

a)Need recognition: This is the initial stage of consumer decision process where the customer identified the requirement of any product. In this stage, there can be the need for some new commodity’s requirement from the consumer or he wants to replace the old one with the new one.

b)Information Search:- The consumer looks for the various sources of information in order to collect the different aspects of the product such as price, features, durability and so on. These information sources can be friends, family, peer groups, newspapers, TV ads and so on.

c) Evaluation of alternatives:- Once the product’s information has been collected, all the alternatives are evaluated on the basis of different factors which really matters to the customers, for example, price, features, durability, ease of use and so on.

d)Purchase:- Once all the alternatives are evaluated, the best one is selected by the customer and purchased. This is the real step of buying

e) Post-purchase behavior:- This is the most important step which determines the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product. If the performance of the product is as expected then the customer will be satisfied else it will create dissatisfaction in him.