Target Canada Essay

Words: 500
Pages: 2

Target Canada did not demonstrate good planning in regards to its expansion in Canadian market for three main reasons. Firstly, it over-priced the consumer products in Canadian market as compared to its US counterpart. Secondly, in an effort to keep the supply chain management lean, Target underestimated initial demand and could not effectively meet the overwhelming interest of the Canadians by keeping the inventory lower than necessary. Lastly, the speed at which they “tested” the market and tried to be profitable so soon, may have been too fast to scale the expansion effectively. The first mistake they made was to overprice their merchandise. While it is understandable that their transportation cost and wage rates were higher but pricing merchandise based on Canadian competitive …show more content…
A negative sentiment on social media in regards to price discrimination can be detrimental to a brand. Also, keeping supply management lean is a good thing but not during the expansion phase, especially when they had planned to expand into over 200 locations anyway. Extra inventory could have been saturated over newer locations in due time. Their inability to effectively meet the demand was another reason for negative sentiment on social media. In the end, they tried to be profitable and worried too much about the positive return on investment too early in the expansion phase. While their strategy of speedy customer service was great, but meeting the demand should have been the top priority. Had they gone in with deeper investment in all merchandising categories, with goals of being profitable during later phases, and keeping the prices at par with US or slightly higher, then their launch in Canadian market would have been much more successful and would have given them the necessary momentum to build upon a stronger and profitable presence in