<\/p>\n
\nCSG Retro Rewind<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\nEfforts to rescue the struggling Target locations in Canada proved unfruitful, as the company announced on April 1st, 2015 that all 133 locations would close on April 12th. Additionally, Target\u2019s three Canadian distribution centers and headquarters in Mississauga closed. In January, Target Canada was granted court protection from creditors, with an anticipation of possibly staying open through May. However, with no profit being generated and liquidation sales successful, Target pulled the plug on all locations. Even though its 17,600 employees did not receive severance, the company paid average working hours until mid-May. The once ambitious expansion north of the border came to an abrupt end, and painted yet another cautionary tale for domestic retailers looking to expand internationally.<\/p>\n 2015 has no doubt been a rough year for Target. The company reached a multi-million dollar settlement with a number of banks over its 2013 customer database breach this month (December). The banks lost millions in the wake of the cyber-attack after having to reimburse customers for fraudulent charges. This latest settlement comes after a $67 million deal with Visa over the breach, while a federal class action lawsuit in March brought by customers was settled for $10 million. In October, Target initiated a new credit card program where all of customers were reissued new cards with chip and pin technology.<\/p>\n The mass merchandisers\u2019 2015 holiday season also started out less than ideal, as Target.com essentially crashed due to high traffic on the busiest online shopping day of the year. Many customers were placed into a virtual shopping line on Cyber Monday, causing long wait times and frustrated shoppers. The results? Target ranked outside the top five retailers for e-commerce sales on Cyber Monday, while possibly even more harmful, damaging its brand as an online merchant. Meanwhile, Amazon dominated once again and undoubtedly picked up a few sales from frustrated Target.com shoppers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s nowhere near all doom and gloom for Target, however. Third quarter results were impressive, with comparable sales growth of 1.9% and digital channel sales growth of 20%. Target returned an impressive $1.3 billion to shareholders in the third quarter alone through dividends and share repurchases. After ridding itself of Canadian operations, beefing up credit card security, and growing the online channel, Target is on the right track heading into 2016. Consistency will be key for the retailer to achieve its potential.<\/p>\n -Brian List<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n Original published date: June 9, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong> The company quickly reached out to customers, as well as to affected credit and debit card issuers, with costly remedies which Target was clearly prepared to support and pay for dearly. Customer reaction was one of shock and horror. However, Target\u2019s proactive announcements and self-imposed, costly solutions seemed to have avoided panic.\u00a0 Virtually everyone waited and wondered if heads would roll.<\/p>\n Soon enough, after an atmosphere of calm had been established, heads did indeed roll. During the first week of March of this year, Target announced the resignation of CIO Beth Jacob.\u00a0 In the media, the blame game was fired up.\u00a0 Many wondered if this resignation was the highest level the scandal would reach.\u00a0 Two months later they received their answer, as CEO Gregg Steinhafel \u2018resigned\u2019. Interestingly at the time of Steinhafel\u2019s resignation, questions arose as to whether the data breach was the lone issue behind Steinhafel\u2019s departure.\u00a0 Those questions were answered less than two weeks later as it was announced that Tony Fisher had been fired as president of Target Canada.\u00a0 Prior to the firing there had been considerable speculation as to how much Target Canada\u2019s initial and early poor performance might have contributed to CEO Steinhafel\u2019s resignation.\u00a0 It appears that disappointment in Target Canada\u2019s initial financials and a surprising lack of shopper enthusiasm to the new concept played a significant part in Steinhafel\u2019s exit. The lack of enthusiasm on the part of Canadian shoppers for Target Canada could better be called disillusion.<\/p>\n Prior to the launch of Target Canada, many Canadian shoppers were famous for visiting Target stores across the border and raving about the quality of the stores, the service, the cleanliness and perhaps most enthusiastically, the prices.\u00a0 Early feedback from Canadian shoppers, after the debut of Target Canada was one of well-communicated, at times viral disappointment, especially in terms of prices. Some Canadian customers thought it might be more cost-effective to return to their old shopping habits and cross the border to shop the Target stores they appreciated.\u00a0 However many shoppers who had previously been visiting Targets across the border as a pleasurable destination, resented the notion that Targets in the U.S. were offering considerably better shopping propositions than the \u2018brand new\u2019 Target Canada concept. Many hopeful Canadians, who had been expecting a fresher, Canadian version of the U.S. Target, strongly announced their disappointment in Target Canada.\u00a0 They felt that Target had breached their trust.\u00a0 Some thought that higher prices in Target Canada were supporting the company\u2019s lower priced efforts in the U.S. Another shopper negative tied to Target\u2019s entry into Canada, which the company should have anticipated, was a result of the nature of Target\u2019s massive Canadian store acquisition.\u00a0 Target decided to acquire the lease agreements to the then-struggling Zellers chain.\u00a0 Target did determine which of the over 200 Zellers locations it would convert to its \u2018new\u2019 format.\u00a0 However observers noted that acquiring numerous locations of a struggling chain was essentially a shortcut to establish itself for the first time in a foreign terrain. Selecting real estate locations is a costly, challenging proposition, especially in a new market.\u00a0 This is far more difficult in foreign country, even one which generally, but not universally, shares a language.<\/p>\n Many observers, at the announcement of Target\u2019s initial Canadian acquisition questioned the move.\u00a0 Several wondered why the company didn\u2019t take the task of starting-up Canadian operations from scratch.\u00a0 Apparently, Mr.\u00a0Steinhafel paid the price for going the easier road with his resignation. Much of Target\u2019s data breach is currently generally blamed on the recently departed.\u00a0 Many think that while it was the result of deliberate, willful criminal acts, at least some of it could have been prevented.\u00a0 It now appears that many shoppers see Target as a co-victim and are not necessarily leaving the Target fold. In terms of the breach of confidence many once hopeful Canadian customers now blame on Target Canada\u2019s muddled introduction, this may not be so easy for Target to overcome.\u00a0 It is likely more difficult to undo a horrible first impression than a major gaffe which was brought on by international criminal behavior. Target is now looking to hire native Canadian executives and board members to guide Target Canada to approach a culture which proud Canadians can embrace.\u00a0 Recently, it has come out that key U.S. based Target executives have indicated that the corporate culture has turned less than enthusiastic, much due to these very distinct breaches.\u00a0 The next Target CEO along with new Target Canada President Mark Schindele and new Exec VP, CIO Bob DeRodes have considerable work ahead to create an atmosphere in which once applauded Target team members can again embrace a proud corporate culture, along with their customers, in two countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CSG Retro Rewind Updated 12\/14\/2015 This month we are looking back at our most popular articles and reviewing where the companies are now. Efforts to rescue the struggling Target locations in Canada proved unfruitful, as the company announced on April 1st, 2015 that all 133 locations would close on April 12th. Additionally, Target\u2019s three… Continue reading Target Faces a Different Type of Breach<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-3881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discount-specialty","tag-insight","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |