t entry into a major catalog business. Rivertown and Target’s e-commerce team have combined to make one business called target.direct. This creation allows Target Corporation to strengthen its capabilities in the direct marketing retail channel and Internet retailing.The general merchandise industry has experienced significant growth of 15.8% annually in the past five years due partly to the strong economy. The industry accounted for $346 billion dollars in 1998. Experts project that it will increase this year and next year by 19.6% and 18.8% respectively. The five-year projection for the industry shows an annual increase of 18%. Selected information on the industry is given in Exhibit 5 and 6. Target Corporation accounted for approximately 9.7% of the industry’s sales in 1999. However, its largest competitor, Wal-Mart, was responsible for about 47% of the sales. With the industry growing at such a rapid pace, each corporation will have to continue to increase sales to keep up with the competition. Threats and OpportunitiesWal-Mart dominates the general merchandise retail industry and is the only major threat to Target Corporation. It is so far ahead that its competitors need to focus on competing rather than trying to keep up. Wal-Mart is a major threat to every other company in the industry. It continues to grow and introduce new ideas that make it more difficult for competitors. Wal-Mart’s Supercenter is growing in popularity and numbers and is dominating the market. There is no way to know if maybe one day in the future, Wal-Mart will be subject to monopolistic or antitrust charges. Benchmarking is very important in this industry because when one company does something that the customers respond to positively, its competitors can relatively easily imitate it. The economy has been very strong lately, however if the economy began to slow down and consumers had less disposable income, it could hurt th...
