Target: From “Expect More” to “Pay Less”

1) Target’s main focus over the past few years has been its never ending competition with the retail Giant, Walmart. As in the text, microenviroment has many “actors”. There is the company, the suppliers, Marketing intermediaries, competitors, Publics, and Customers (Armstrong 67). When Target hired the Advertising company “Wieden and Kennedy” to overtake all Advertising, they brought the company aspect of microenviroment into play. Also, Target’s main focus, the customers, can be seen as a major player in the microenviroment model. By changing their slogan from “Expect More, Pay less” to “Life’s A Moving Target” (Armstrong A5), the company tried to identify more with their customers.
2) Macroenviromental factors that have affected Target’s Performance have ranged from Cultural meaning “Companies wanting to be more socially responsible in citizen’s markets and communities”(Armstrong 70) to Natural, meaning “the natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or that are affected by marketing activities” (Armstrong 77). How Target affected the cultural aspect of the microenviroment was making the stores more “one stop shop” friendly, by “creating mini grocery stores to provide customers with a one stop shopping experience”(ArmstrongA4), Target was actually saving customers trips, thus making them more popular.
3) Target realized that people simply did not have as much money as they did in the past. Thus focusing more on the “Pay Less” aspect of their marketing strategy, the company catered more to the needs of the public. This did not come easy however. Target was willing to spend massive amounts of money to show customers that they were “Just as committed to bargains as Wal-Mart” (Armstrong A5). The pursuit of this particular strategy has slowly, but surely paid off for the company “during 2010, Target’s profits shot up 16