Retail Analysis Using Swot and Rater

Retail Analysis Using SWOT and RATER

This is an analysis of the retail store Target. Target's mission statement is to be "Fast, Fun, and Friendly". (Target 2011). My personal experience with working for this company and being a customer yielded outstanding examples of their mission statement. I will also evaluate my personal experience using RATER factors and perform a SWOT analysis.

Using the RATER factors to evaluate my experience the first time walking through Target as a customer, for my first impression, I noticed that most of the employees were stocking and zoning areas of the store. This led me to believe that Target has more emphasis on keeping the store in order and stocked than in customer service, making them seem unreliable and unresponsive to customer needs. I was clearly mistaken when I came across a red, rectangular looking box with a black button. Target calls them call boxes and when person needs assistance, all they have to do is press the button located on the call box. The Target employee stationed in the area has exactly 20 seconds to get to your location before he is flagged as being late. He than deactivates the call box and assists you with your needs. This shows the RATER factor of reliability as the Target employee showed me that my time was important and didn't leave me waiting. This to me is an ingenious idea to ensure anyone who needs assistance gets the help they need. Another RATER factor they fulfilled was assurance. The Target special phrase that all employees have to ask is "Can I help you find something?" It did not sound monotonous at all. He emphasized in contacting me before he even looked at the call box. This showed me the RATER factor called empathy, he did not put out the image that he came for the call box and that he was happy to assist me with all my questions. His appearance was very clean and concise with their company image. This showed me that Target paid attention to the tangibles RATER factor. The use of the call boxes gives the impression that they would follow the RATER factor of being responsive, but I am sure if you took them away, they would probably pay more attention to stocking and zoning than the customer's themselves.

My experience working at Target was not of the same caliber of experience unfortunately. As an employee, I felt that Target lacked a much needed bond to their employees in what can only be described as a "meat grinder" way of treating employees. The company seemed to believe that they had an endless pool of employees that they could grab from in the event they terminated someone. They were great with customers in terms of customer service, but they did not carry those values over to the employee side of their business.

Using SWOT analysis, their strengths include training their associates that customers always com first, the ingenious