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Example research essay topic: Wal Mart Aid - 1,438 words

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... es outstanding. ) Target monitors profits extremely well. Few retailers apart from Wal-Mart keep such tight control over their business, from selecting the inventory to ringing up a sale. Its basic premise -- that customers first must be happy if they are to buy anything -- means telling clerks in the sprawling stores to be ''fast, fun and friendly'' and watching them, electronically and otherwise, to make sure that they are.

Target managers grade store employees regularly -- green is good, yellow is alarming, red is trouble. A store with too many red grades gets a special visit from a district manager, who then returns at 11 -day intervals until he or she sees improvement. All stores give the central office daily reports about topics like returns and checkout speed; Target customers are polled at least twice a year about their experiences. Employees learn that they are crucial to Target's success. ''We tell them, 'Your job is to manage the brand at the store level, ' ''s aid Bart Better, the executive vice president of Target Stores, who keeps thick binders of report cards on every store. ''The challenge is getting all 1, 100 stores to run the same way and deliver that Target experience every day. '' Managers, whom the company calls store team leaders, hold ''huddles'' with workers each morning and are encouraged to thank them for jobs well done. IN the back room of a Super Target in Minnetonka, Minn. , a western suburb of Minneapolis, the quest for controlled excellence can be seen from the spotless floors to the posted ''error rates, '' which measure how often a worker puts a product on the wrong shelf. One worker -- or associate, in Target's language -- had an error rate of 0. 2 percent; the goal is 3. 5 percent or lower.

Returning, say, loose bottles of creme rinse to the right place is made easier by a filing system that is as organized as a library's. Instead of open shelves in the return room, however, shelves hold cardboard containers, arranged by bar code, that match the coded information on every product. ''This little machine runs the entire store, ''s aid Mike Kunst, a manager, displaying a hand-held scanner that reads bar codes, calculates how much is needed on a shelf, matches it against predetermined product needs for the store and tells the company's nearest distribution center when that store is likely to need another shipment. Wal-Mart also uses sophisticated computers to track its inventory. Target's penchant for control was tested after the company went into the grocery business in 1995, with a handful of stores in the Minneapolis area. (There will be 92 Super Targets by October. ) The stores follow a plan sent from headquarters: each has a Starbucks coffee bar just inside the front door, a sushi chef hired from a California company and an elaborate bakery and deli section. At the end of most aisles is a red service phone that customers -- known as ''guests'' in Target-speak -- can use to get help in finding the Gulden's mustard or the Philippe Starck chocolate spread. Everyone from the clerks on the floor to the vice president in charge of stores knows when that phone rings. ''Headquarters gets a printout of how many times it went on and how fast the response was, ''s aid Jon Radtke, a manager in the Minnetonka store.

But aisles don't always have to look like a page out of a trade journal, as the company learned the hard way when sales failed to take off. ''We found that guests thought the display was too perfect, '' Mr. Radtke said of the cereal aisle, cradling a box of Life. ''So instead of filling the shelves continuously, now we do it only once, at 2 o'clock, and then again after the store closes. '' Initially, giving away free bites of bologna or potato salad did not sit well with Target executives. To Target, that's ''shrink, '' or lost revenue, said Jeff P. Thomas, the manager for perishables at Super Target, who arrived last year from a supermarket chain in Virginia. He and others hired from the grocery business helped change that mentality; these days, someone strolling near the lavish deli counter at a Super Target may well be offered a sample. TARGET'S venture into groceries has produced mixed results, some analysts say. ''The concept has not taken off as quickly as some hoped, and Target's marketing might in the apparel category did not immediately prove effective for food, ''s hari Schwartzman Eberts, a retail analyst at J.

P. Morgan Securities, said in a recent note to investors. ''We continue to struggle to see Super Target's niche in the food space and are concerned that returns on capital may prove lower than expected if food sales productivity does not improve. '' While the company includes food advertising in the newspaper circulars that it uses to sell Mossimo slacks and other products, shoppers have been slow to adjust their assumptions about what Target sells. ''I might come here to pick up a few things, ''s aid Jeanne Thompson, of Orono, Minn. , who was in the clothing section of the Minnetonka store recently. But, she added, she usually buys her groceries at Cub, the low-priced chain. In every Target department, waste is anathema, and planning and evaluating are constants. Those are tips picked up from Wal-Mart, where negotiations with suppliers are notoriously tough, though reduced profit margins are supposed to be made up with high volume. ''Given that we compete against an entity as efficient and as disciplined from a cost standpoint as Wal-Mart is, it is an absolute requirement, year in and year out, that we seek new and different ways to deliver our offerings to our guests, ''s aid Douglas Scovanner, Target's chief financial officer. ''It requires a relentless pursuit of cost control. For well-run companies, there is never an end to that pursuit. '' Manufacturers noticed that principle in action as Kmart weakened, leaving Target in a stronger position. ''We just got a notification from Target that they have changed their payment terms, ''s aid one longtime supplier, who insisted that he not be identified.

Instead of paying invoices within 30 days, Target declared, terms would be 60 days, with a 2 percent discount, he said, adding that he was told to ''take it or leave it. '' A Target spokesman would not comment. Target's advertising budget is rising rapidly. In 2000, it spent $ 824 million on advertising, up just 4 percent, or $ 33 million, from the previous year. But last year, that budget was $ 924 million -- a 12 percent jump. Marketing is essential, said Michael Francis, the company's marketing chief, to help build Target's persona and create what he called ''the wow'' for its customers. Such marketing, though, is not something that Wal-Mart makes a priority.

One way that Target is trying to offset such disparity on the balance sheet is by expanding its credit card operations. Credit card income generated $ 445 million in pretax profit, or about 15 percent of Target's pretax profit last year. Mr. Scovanner said the company expected that to rise to around 20 percent of total earnings in the next year or two. ''Credit cards are important because of what they do, '' he said. ''We are a retailer, and the purpose of offering credit to our guests is to increase shopping frequency and to increase average transaction size. '' For decades, the company has issued Target credit cards to shoppers, and with relatively smooth results. Last year, it began rolling out its Target Visa card to the top 5 percent of its current card holders, as measured by their spending. The information gathered through those customers' Visa purchases outside Target stores will be used to evaluate customer shopping patterns and to increase sales.

CREDIT'S flip side is risk. Earlier this spring, Wall Street's worries about possible write-offs from bad credit card debt knocked 8. 3 percent off the price of Target shares in two days. The stock quickly recovered, but executives at Target say they still cannot understand it. Somehow, Wall Street believed that Target would end up just as Sears, Roebuck did a few years earlier, with a cumbersome credit card division that was a drain, not a boon. But Target executives said their plan would not miss. ''We know what our objectives are, '' Mr.

Francis said. ''Making sure we never become complacent, ensuring that we are always able to paint a picture of what we want Target to look like. '


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Research essay sample on Wal Mart Aid

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