...Comparison of Two Retail Giants In the fiercely competitive retail industry, Macy’s and Dillard’s hold rank among the largest fashion apparel and home décor retailers. While both compete for the same target market, an examination of each companies’ annual report reveals important differences in their strategies, which inherently differentiates the report presentation, accounting policies, and financial condition of the two corporations. Brief Overview Macy’s, Inc. was founded in 1858 by a Quaker businessperson named Rowland Hussey. The company has since expanded to operate 40 Bloomingdale’s locations and over 810 Macy’s stores, spanning across forty-five states. Seventy years later, William Dillard founded Dillard’s. The company presently has 326 locations in twenty-nine states. Both retailers offer consumers trendy merchandise ranging from fashion apparel for men, women, and children, to accessories cosmetics, home furnishings, and other goods. Annual Report Presentation The beginning of each financial report offers a brief overview of the company, from it’s founding to current economic conditions that are affecting the company. The biggest differences in the initial paragraphs are that Dillard’s jumps right into admitting the competitive nature of their industry and proceed to describe the characteristics of their competition. In comparison, Macy’s reveals information about its subsidiaries and the support functions provided to its retail operating divisions...
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...simulation Study Pilkington Library Main Issuing Desk Abstract: This paper investigates the activity of the main issuing desk at the 3rd floor of Pilkington Library during weekdays between 5 and 6pm. The aim is to find ways of minimizing queuing times and respond to flexibility in demand. Two sets of data have been analysed and transposed into a simulation study using the Simul8 software package. The results of the simulation are presented in support of our optimization proposals. Introduction With more than 370,000 books issued last year, serving almost 15,000 users which made up to 600,000 enquires, the Pilkington Library is definitely one of the busiest place on campus especially when it gets near the examination period. One of the library objective is: "To support and facilitate the research, learning, teaching and administrative activities of the University, by organising, maintaining and providing access to appropriate literature and information resources in such a way as to provide optimum benefit for Library users." (Loughborough Library) Of course, the library is a complex facility providing a range of services which far exceeds our simulation capabilities requiring the support of over 80 staff and use of specialised computer packages to track all items, users, requests and staff resources ensuring the functionality of the whole system. The scope of our research therefore will be limited to the long-loan counter at the 3rd floor of the library which is the main contact...
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...INTRODUCTION The purpose of this report is to analyse a competitive industry using Terry Porter’s five forces model. The analysis will then narrow the industry into segments and focus on how key players in the segment exhibit distinct advantages. A discussion will follow on how the leading company achieves competitive advantage by means of their distinct competencies and whether they can sustain it over time. The chosen industry for this report is the retail industry, specifically the discount merchandiser segment. The key companies discussed in this paper will be Costco and Wal-Mart, two of the biggest discount merchandisers in the USA. While Costco and Wal-Mart operate under two very separate business models, they carry similar products and compete in similar geographical areas. The life cycle stage of this industry is in the mature stage where the market is now saturated with notable players aside from the two mentioned. Growth in this market is demonstrated by expanding into different geographic and other markets to increase their overall market shares. Under the maturity life stage, minimizing cost and expansion into different segments can develop a competitive advantage over other big box retailer competitors. Currently, Wal-Mart is the industrial and segment leader because of its ability to minimize their expenses and expand quickly in global and online markets. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is a mass-market retailer operating in three segments: Wal-Mart USA, Wal-Mart...
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...Dheepak on Retail STVP 2007-002 STVP-2007-002 [June 12, 2007] Organized Retail “Inquilab” in India Current Landscape of Retail in India The Indian government does not recognize retail as an industry. In India 98% of the retail sector consists of counter-stores and street-vendors.1 With no large players, inadequate infrastructure and a small affording population that believed in saving rather than spending, Indian retail never attracted the interest of large corporations. That was till they realized that retail in India is a USD 320 billion dollar industry, growing at CAGR 5% and contributing to 39% of the GDP2 (See exhibit 1 for projected market size of retail in India.). It might seem almost nonsensical that this important sector of the country’s economy has been overlooked by corporate giants. One cannot blame them though. Indian retail has been a traditionally unorganized sector, dominated by counter-stores and street vendors (See Exhibits 2 and 3 for pictures). While retail employs a large sector of the population, most of these people are uneducated, unskilled individuals that regard retail as the preferred career alternative to agriculture. They never had the means nor will to develop the sector or expand their business. Retail never enjoyed the support of the Indian consumer. A miserly population that barely had the means to make end meet never treated shopping as a form of leisure. While individual retailers saw small gains, lack of infrastructure...
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...Archives & Bibliothèques de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles 06 March 2014 ProQuest Table des matières 1. Home Depot exits China............................................................................................................................... 1 06 March 2014 ii ProQuest Document 1 sur 1 Home Depot exits China Lien de document ProQuest Liens: Vlink Texte intégral: DIY giant Home Depot is to pull out of China as it plans to close its remaining big-box stores after failing to find the right store format and do-it-yourself culture in the country. The retailer is shuttering its last seven stores in the country, resulting in 850 job losses.The closures follow that of its final store in Beijing in January. Home Depot will keep two speciality shops in Tianjin selling paint and flooring and home decoration.Home Depot chief executive Frank Blake said: "Closing stores is always a difficult decision. We are thankful for the dedicated service of our store associates in China, and we wish them all the best during this transition."According to retail analysts, Home Depot did not find the right business format for one of the world's most difficult home improvement markets, said the Financial Times.Analyst at China Market Research group in Shanghai James Roy said: "Home Depot failed because it didn't make any adjustments to its format to fit the way Chinese consumers shop."Home Depot essentially exported its big-box model to China and didn't adapt."Roy said...
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...retailers are increasing competition in the yoga space. Industry veterans such as Victoria’s Secret and Adidas have entered Lululemon’s market, offering similar products at lower prices. Yet it is still difficult to compare Lululemon to its competitors as the smaller stores are too small and the sporting good giants offer more than one product category (clothes, shoes, sporting equipments) unlike Lululemon. Lululemon has a well defined target market and their performance so far reinforces the fact that the company has a strong ground. Its direct competitors are small businesses that run individual yoga apparel stores and retail stores located in gyms and fitness centers. One example is Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS), which is a sporting goods retailer that sells both top sports brands’ products (e.g. Nike, Adidas etc.) as well as its own private label product lines, which accounts for 15% of its total sales. On a large scale, Lululemon competes with the sports industry giants Nike and Adidas which are the two largest manufacturers of athletic footwear and apparel in the world, respectively. Both the companies are enormous in terms of sales and market presence in comparison to Lululemon and both have their own stores and their products are carried in a multitude of online and brick-and-mortar stores; in 2008, the revenues for Nike and Adidas were $18.6 billion & $15.6 billion respectively, whereas Lululemon reported revenue of $353.5 million. However, the number for Lululemon has...
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... 1 A Comparison in the Financial Accounting Methods Used by Abercrombie & Fitch and H&M January 2012 COMPARING FINANCIAL REPORTS BETWEEN A&F AND H&M 2 Abstract Financial accounting encompasses compiling operating figures that any business or organization uses to account for their operations. For business strict guidelines must be followed to be in compliance with Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules when filing annual reports. This paper will examine, compare and contrast the differences in accounting styles and profitability of two clothing retail giants. Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) is a domestic retailer based out of Ohio with over 300 outlets in the United States and Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) a Swedish outfit that is by sales the world’s second largest clothing retailer. The income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement from each company’s annual report will be compared and contrasted to examine differences in style and methodology. COMPARING FINANCIAL REPORTS BETWEEN A&F AND H&M 3 A Comparison in the Financial Accounting Methods Used by Abercrombie & Fitch and H&M The scope of this paper is to examine, compare and contrast the differences in accounting styles and profitability of two clothing retail giants. Abercrombie &...
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...(70% of the population) and more people were comfortable shopping online. This yielded both favorable (lower over head costs and convenience to the customers with wide choices of items and prices that were appealing) and unfavorable (Walmart has invested heavily on the infrastructure like the EDI links and POS systems) circumstances. * Economic Factor: Domestically the U.S market had a very slow growth. Although the economy was said to be in recession it favored the growth of the organization because it offered consumers commodities at a very affordable cost compared to their competitors. INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: Walmart belongs to the discount retail industry offering heterogeneous products of hard and soft goods with very low prices. Consumers appreciated the value for price, service and convenience. Walmart being a giant in the retail industry had compelling opportunities in spite of the challenges faced as a mature market....
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...---------------------------1 1.1The Problem and the Study Objective----------------------------------------------------------1 1.2 Current Study-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 2. Localization----------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 2.1 The Definition of Localization ----------------------------------------------------------------3 2.2 The Importance of Localization Strategy to Transnational Retailing---------------------3 2.3 Three Layers of Localization for Transnational Retailing----------------------------------4 3. Retail Transnational in China------------------------------------------------------------------------7 3.1 The Status Quo of Chinese Retail Environment --------------------------------------------7 3.2 Opportunity and Threat Analysis --------------------------------------------------------------8 4. Localizing Strategies in China Based on 3 Layers-----------------------------------------------12 4.1 Localizing the Strength -----------------------------------------------------------------------13 4.2 Localizing Marketing Mix (4Ps)...
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...Two Products Comparison [Your Name] [Course Code]: [Course Title] [Instructor Name] [Submission Date] 70 Inch Flat Screen Buying decision mostly based on their buying power, picture quality, size, brightness clarity, brand, price, compatibility. I chose the target audience of only men because mostly men have purchasing power “The company is featuring its target audience of men aged 35 to 54 as its advertising spokesmen, replacing their heads in ads with giant TV sets…” (Bulik, 2011) Consumer level of Confidence in own decision making is medium to high Personal Experience My father wanted to purchase a 70-Inch Flat screen in previous days. He searched different brands, Retail Stores, Google and their decision is based on different factors. Those are price, Size, Quality and Brightness. Our Family members and friends also gave suggestions about brand quality and technical specifications of different Brands. So, all these things helped them a lot for a Final Purchase Decision. Motor Cycle Buyer decision is based on their buying power, price of product, durability or with a test ride. Target market of Motor Cycle Companies are Males . Different Motor cycle companies have different target markets that depends on their product lines i.e. sports, Heavy Bikes and cruiser style motor Cycles .Because Motor Cycle is an Expensive Product, before purchasing consumer measure qualities of brand and evaluate them as a Comparison based on product attributes, technical specifications...
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...ACC/280-Week 2 team assignment- Sandy’s portion (Amounts in millions) What were the company’s two largest current liabilities at the end of its 2 most recent annual reporting periods? Wal-Mart’s two largest current liabilities at the end of its two most recent annual reporting periods were: 2012-Accounts payable totaling $36,608 and Accrued liabilities totaling $18,154. 2011-Accounts payable totaling $33,676 and Accrued liabilities totaling $18,701. Accrued liabilities consisted of the following: Accrued wages and benefits, self-insurance and other. (1)Accrued wages and benefits include accrued wages, salaries, vacation, bonuses and other incentive plans. (2) Self-insurance consists of all insurance-related liabilities, such as workers’ compensation, general liability, vehicle liability, property and employee-related health care benefits. (3) Other accrued liabilities consists of various items such as accrued taxes, maintenance, utilities, advertising, interest, and severance liabilities. What were the company’s total liabilities at the end of its 2 most recent annual reporting periods? The company’s total liabilities at the end of fiscal year 2012 totaled: $62,300. For fiscal year 2011, Wal-Mart’s current liabilities totaled $58,603. Other liabilities that were included in this total were: Accrued income taxes, long-term debt due within one year, Obligations under capital leases due within one year and current liabilities of discontinued operations. ...
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...Business Model Comparison Name Institution Wal-Mart and Tarket Wal-Mart and Tarket are the two leading retail stores in the United States with a customer base of more than 100 million shoppers. The stores run their operations in different parts of the United States and their annual posting for revenue accounts for a significant percentage of earnings for retails businesses in the US (Zikmund & Babin, 2013). Together, the stores have a capital base worth billions in dollars. Over the years, the stores have engaged in stiff competition in trying to increase their customer base. The companies share commonalities for being the only retailing businesses that record growth in times of financial crisis. However, difference exists in the approach used by the management in running the operations of the stores. At Wal-Mart for instance, the administration is open to communication and they encourage employees to use of stratagems that increase profits at the company (Böhm, 2008). Tarket on the other hand uses similar strategies but they emphasize on satisfying both customers and the employees. Moreover, Tarket is inclined towards promoting high quality products that give consumers value for their money. For the past few years, the two companies have been engaging in stiff competition in trying to outwit each other by using modern techniques in running their operations (Böhm, 2008). In a bid to entice customers, Walmart have been offering bargain on prices for their commodities...
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...right to freedom of speech and expression is used (and misused) over and over again. Unlike countries like U.S., where there are only two major political alliances (the Democratic and the Republicans), we have, in India, apart from the two dominating alliances, a host of other fronts, all of them persistently engaged in scuffles over every single agenda, sometimes not even paying much attention to what their stands mean, to themselves and to the country. Same has been the case with the issue of introduction of Foreign Direct Investment (F.D.I) in the Indian retail market. The government has decided to open up the Indian retail market for global players through F.D.I. in multi-brand retail with a 51% threshold (i.e. they can have only 51% equity in the investment) and 100% ceiling in single-brand retail. There are several versions of the possible outcome of this scenario floating in the different spheres of the country. But the different interpretations ought to be backed with rational reasons. Broadly, there are two different views with regard to the decision of the Indian government to allow F.D.I. in Indian retail market, one supporting it and the other opposed to it. The first argument is put forward by the government itself, quite obviously supporting its resolution. The government claims that 10 million jobs will be created in the retail sector in the next 3 years (though without floating any judicious explanation). It mandates a minimum investment of 100 million U.S...
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...Employee's rewards ukessays.com /dissertations/management/employees-rewards.php CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0 Overview In any organization, employee's rewards usually given to attract, motivate and retain the employees to stay longer and contribute a good quality services to ensure the successful of the organization; in other words, rewards play an important role in creating, building and maintaining the commitment among employees with the purpose to ensure high standard of performances and workforce stability. According to the individual - organizational exchange theme, individuals enter the organization with special qualification and skill, desire and goals, and expect in return a work setting where they can use their skill, satisfy their desire, and achieve their goals (Mottaz, 1988). At the minimum, employees expect their organization to provide fair pay, safe working condition, and fair treatment. (Beer, Spector, Lawrence, Mills, & Walton, 1984). It simply implies that employees offer or increase their commitment when organization meets employees' expectation regarding fulfillment of their important needs. Thus, the exchange perspective explains organizational commitment as a function of work rewards and work values (Lambert, 2000; Mottazz, 1988), and suggests the importance of work rewards for continuously encouraging employees. According to exchange theory and reciprocity norm, employees repay the rewards received from organization through increase commitment to the organization...
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...largest chain in the world of coffee houses. The company purchases and roast whole bean coffees to sell, along with handmade tea beverages, food items, and coffees sold inside their retail stores. “As of Oct 3 2010, Co. has 8,833 company-operated retail stores and 8,025 licensed stores worldwide” (Starbucks). To maximize brand recognition and awareness to become the most respected and recognized in the coffee world, Starbucks implanted a marketing program that uses a marketing mix to satisfy the wants and needs of its large target audience. Discussed below is the breakdown of the marketing mix: product, place, price, and promotion. Product Starbucks sells everything from espressos, brewed coffees, iced drinks, smoothies, Panini’s, pastries, snack items, mugs, and even music. Starbucks sells more than 30 types of eco-conscious frappe’s to whole bean coffees and iced drinks along with other brand stamped memorabilia. Not only do they offer coffee but also have smoothies, wraps, and pastries to improve the customer experience and stay ahead of the competition. Starbuck’s has also introduced “Instant via Ready “and expanded their Tazo line with Tazo Tea Infusions and Full leaf Tazo Tea Lattes. The company claims that the instant coffee named “Instant via Ready” is very distinguishable in comparison to the competition of instant coffees. Full Leaf Tazo Tea Lattes and Tazo Tea Infusions are the company's new tea offerings through which it hopes to attract tea drinkers” (Edwards)...
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