Week 5 Individual Paper FINAL

Submitted By flutterby77
Words: 879
Pages: 4

Implementation, Strategic Control, and Contingency Plans
Kristina Hollenbeck
December 21, 2014
STR/581
Margarita Salas-Amaro

Nordstrom, Inc. is a leading fashion specialty retailer offering compelling clothing, shoes and accessories for men, women and children. Since 1901, they’ve been committed to providing customers with the best possible service and focused on improving it every day.
This commitment has taken them from a small Seattle shoe shop to the leading fashion specialty retailer they are today. Nordstrom is proud to serve customers in 38 states with 118 full-line stores in the United States and one in Canada, 167 Nordstrom Rack locations, two Jeffrey boutiques and one clearance store. They also serve customers online in 96 countries through Nordstrom.com. Currently, nordstromrack.com and HauteLook site serves customers in Canada and Australia. They also recently began serving customers through Trunk Club, a personalized styling service.
Objective
Nordstrom believes fashion is a business of optimism, and in that spirit, continue to grow and evolve. Free shipping and free returns, mobile shopping and exciting new retail partnerships offer continued opportunities to serve more customers in more ways with a fresh, relevant shopping experience and inspiring style. Their philosophy is that fashion changes and shopping changes but their commitment to happy customers doesn't.
In order to achieve this vision or objective, Nordstrom completely focus’ on their customers. They make sure they offer quality products that customers are completely satisfied with and maintain the customer loyalty. Nordstrom also offers a return/exchange policy that no other retail company offers which guarantees the complete satisfaction of their customers.
Retail Industry With the economy, we have seen many retail department stores downsize or even go out of business in the last few years or even the last decade. It definitely hasn’t been a prosperous environment for the retail industry. Nordstrom has seemed to overcome these obstacles by focusing on their customer service and retail relationships to provide the best products and service for the consumers. An estimated two-thirds of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from retail consumption. Stores closing and opening are indicators of how well the U.S. economy is recovering after the Great Recession in the late 2000’s. Net sales for Nordstrom increased 12% for 2012 from 2011. Same-store sales increased 7.3% for the year. This shows how competitive the retail industry is and how Nordstrom surpasses all other department stores.
Action Items In management, an action item is a documented event, task, activity or action that needs to take place. Action items are discrete units that can be handled by a single person. In this case, it is important that Nordstrom’s management focuses on the action item of the changing fashion and how to provide excellent customer satisfaction with these never ending changes. Their main focus continues to be customer service so they need to be able to inform their customer of the changes in fashion. Recently they have introduced “trend” shows in some of their stores. With this event, customer purchase tickets to partake in an event where they can see what will be “in” for the next season. Nordstrom also has giveaways and raffles exclusive to those that purchased tickets and attend the event.
Milestones & Deadlines Here are some important milestones Nordstrom has made through their history as a company:
1901- John W. Nordstrom opens a shoe store in Seattle
1923- Second store is opened in Seattle
1930-The stores are renamed Nordstrom
1950- Two more stores are opened in Oregon and Seattle
1966- Nordstrom shoe store starts to sell clothing
1971- The company goes public
1973- Nordstrom