Target and its Position in the Online Marketplace
The tremendous growth of technological advancement has become the driving force of contemporary industries. The Internet, for instance, had made products and services across the globe a low-cost alternative to traditional international firms ( 2003). Its diffusion has revolutionized the business arena. It also changes high-tech marketing overnight while different industries have been trying to use it as part of their marketing strategy. It has not only reconfigured the way different firms do business and the way the consumers buy goods and services, but it has also become an effective instrument in transforming the value chain from manufacturers to retailers to consumers, creating a new retail distribution channel (1999). The integration of the internet with IMC enables interactivity, which in turn allows the counter flow of information. E-marketing is a powerful tool used by different business organizations around the world. It is defined as the process of achieving marketing objectives through the use of electronic communications technology. (2001) have provided a 5Ss’ mnemonic for how the internet can be applied by all business firms for different e-marketing tactics. These 5S’s are selling, serve, speak, save and sizzle.
E-marketing is also known to be the online marketing strategy utilized by different company whose objective is to be the best company in their field. In various countries worldwide, more and more business firms have been using e-marketing strategy in order to be competitive. With Target Corporation, they operates more than 1,300 stores in 47 states with its wide variety of products ranges from retail goods and grocery such as clothing and garments, office supplies, foods and beverages, consumer electronics, house wares and the like. In the same manner, they offer e-marketing using domain. From books, foods and beverages, automobiles and other products and services, Target Corp. maintains a competitive stature by means of the e-marketing strategy. Online marketing enables the company to be known worldwide since more and more people are able to access information derived from the Internet. Within the business world, where competition is strict, online marketing is one essential marketing strategy applied by most industries.
For the record, Target Corp. is the sixth largest retailer in the United States (2005), ranked 27th on the 2005 Fortune 500, placed third largest seller of music in the US ( 2005), and holds the identity as the retailer who sells more gift cards than any other store in the whole country are premises that will qualify the claim that Target Corp. position in the online marketplace is competitive and in progression.
Online marketing is considered to be the most expensive yet seems to be the most comprehensive marketing strategy that every company wants to implement and apply. At present, people, particularly those in the business arena, tend to engage themselves within the trend of rapidly growing technology so as to stay competitive. Upon surfing the Internet, various companies like Target Corp. have put up their official sites online for customers and potential consumers to view. (2002), websites have now become a popular medium for advertising and reaching a large group of people. Target.direct is the corporation’s team who owns and oversees the e-commerce (online marketing) initiatives. It was established early in 2000 and mainly consists of the e-commerce team and its direct merchandising unit. The team and the unit merged as a single integrated organization (2006).
Using Target.com as their official website, the corporation’s current position to the online marketplace is comparatively competitive. Its performance specifically to the online marketing is high. Today, research studies ascertained that online shopping was perceived to be more time saving than other traditional approaches of shopping by customers. (2003) extenuated that Internet shopping helps to support the needs of busy working people as it is convenient for them to shop online.
Merging and acquisition is among the strategic actions that the management is taking into practice. This is a way to expand their market and distributional coverage. Among the partnership and cooperation engagements that they had are:
In June 2000, AOL and Target rollout marketing campaign and established the multi-year strategic alliance and joint marketing and promotion initiatives. It features a “special edition CD-ROM of the AOL service with co-branded features and packaging” being offered in more than 900 Target outlets nationwide. In the same manner, AOL members who avail the service in any Target outlet is entitled to a 10% discount year-round on products bought via target.com (2000). Further, target.com was made available in the Shop@AOL online shopping destinations and other areas across AOL, AOL.COM, Compuserve, Netscape Netcenter, and AOL Digital City ( 2000).
While in 2002, Target Corp. created a partnership with Amazon.com in providing order fulfillment and guest services ( contributors, 2006). As of now, Target’s e-commerce site uses Amazon.com’s e-commerce system (2002). The two engaged into business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy. With the collection of products available in Amazon.com, online marketers can just use the one-click-process to see their preferred items.
Today, Target Corp. is highly competitive and striving to go along with its competitors regardless of external conditions like the world economy. The management continuously create innovative marketing solutions hat may be perfect in its online shopping operation. These innovations are always directed to satisfactory, convenient, and customer-oriented service. However, the greatest threat among worldwide retailers today is the action of Wal-Mart to go on organic products ( 2006). With this introduction, Target and all other retail distributors must take antidotal engagement. Thus, IT solutions are needed so as to alleviate the emerging and following aftermaths.
Web-based solutions and applications have radically brought fast-speed changes in information system, supply chains, and marketing operations in the business arena. This in turn had made industrial firms worldwide to rethink and reconstruct the strategic approaches especially in the marketing field. The idea, on the surface, may seem to be simple. However, as mentioned earlier the off-line to on-line translation of strategic approaches in marketing requires rigorous preparation. Marketing is such a complicated matter in its own right, and further integrating the concept of web-based applications makes it more complex.
Nevertheless, all businesses are continuously pursuing despite the intricacies of anchoring on-line solutions to marketing strategies. This is because the benefits from the application of the “web” that every company could gain are certainly cannot be underemphasized. Internet as a marketing tool for business creates and opportunities as worldwide exposure, increased brand loyalty, one-to-one marketing, interactive communications, market intelligence, customer service, product and technical support, and electronic commercial operations.
With this technology, the Target Corp. is expecting to achieve efficiency savings, boost sales, grow its customer base and increase customer retention (2003) and at the same time improving its brand position in the online market place.
In sum, Target Corp. brand position in the online marketplace is in progression and relatively competitive. With the increasing sales during the first two months this year, Target Corp. expects to generate more income and customers – both in traditional and online shopping. As mentioned earlier, with the various merging and acquisition being utilized by the management and the online shopping culture being used by most number of people, Target Corp. will maintain its competitive edge and might overtake the growth of its competitors. Thus, Target.com must be inclusive, convenient, and simple to use.
Appendices
Appendix I
Screen shot of an advertisement in AOL.com
Appendix II
Screen shot of Target Products offered in Amazon.com
Appendix III
Target Corp. Current Website
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