MKT 3210 Fall 2021

Holiday Shopping Season: Answer Form

Student Name:

Grading Criteria

1) This assignment requires formal business writing. Your writing tone should be formal.

2) All sentences must be complete. Bullet points are not acceptable.

3) Use proper grammar.

4) You must use your own words in your answers. Do not copy and paste sentences from the assigned articles.

5) The majority of your grade will be based on correctness and quality. Regarding quality, an answer with fewer than four (4) lines on computer viewing (not on smartphone viewing) will be considered as a poor-quality answer.

Q1) In your opinion, why are holiday shopping seasons so important for many retailers?

In my opinion, the holiday season is so important to so many retailers because it is the time to catch up from low sales in slow seasons. Many stores need the fourth quarter profit to stay ahead financially. When I worked at my previous job in my hometown, I had the advantage of seeing the company’s income statements. This showed me just how much Factory Connection needed that extra push there at the end. During the September-November months people hold back on spending money because they know that the holiday season is coming soon, this puts retailers in a bad place because of such low profit but opens up more of an opportunity to make back that money in the holiday season!

Q2) Based on the first four articles and your own experience, what factors affect retail sales during a holiday shopping season?

One of the factors affecting retail sales during the holiday season is all the new delivery/pick up options. So many stores offer online shopping experiences now and during the holiday’s delivery days are extended so you can get just about any gift delivered to your door before Christmas day. These online stores are also helpful when there is a mom of four that must find a babysitter to go shopping, or she can do it from the couch. Or a man who works late hours and the stores are closed when he gets off, he can shop at midnight. The things that both stores can do to make it more convenient for shoppers, like delivery and curb side pick-up, helps raise the retail sales more and more each holiday season.

Q3) Based on the first four articles, what were the major trends during the last holiday shopping season in 2020?

Online shopping is becoming a major trend in the retail world. Consumers want shopping to be as easy as possible. When Kroger, Walmart, and other stores started their curb side pick-up, it exploded. Everyone was using it because it saved them more time in the stores. This is also true when it comes to clothing and toys at target for example. If I was a mom shopping for my kids, it is a lot easier to pick some things out online, pull up to the door and have someone load them in. That is a lot of time saved in the store, and the stress of finding someone to watch the children during the holiday season just so I can go shop. Between Nov 1 and Dec 24th, online shopping rose 19.1% last year, if that doesn’t signify that the trend of online shopping is taking off then I’m not sure what will.

Q4) Based on the last article, in dealing with smaller foot traffic and increasing online orders, what changes did Target and Walmart make during the holiday shopping season in 2019?

Changes that Walmart and Target made during the holiday shopping season in 2019 was retraining their employees. They both chose to not be defeated by lack of in-store foot traffic but to capitalize on the new generational phenome of online shopping. Both companies chose to retrain their existing staff in satisfying their company’s growing online consumers. They decided to do this by making them experts in certain departments of the store. By doing this, it made fulfilling online orders easier, faster, and more efficient.

Q5) How would you evaluate those changes described in Question 4 in terms of preparing Target and Walmart for changed shopping behavior driven by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020? Be specific as much as possible.

This pandemic has changed the way that we not only shop but the way we interact in-person with people. The changes that both companies have made to meet the needs of their consumers is amazing. Covid-19 has forever changed the way that we interact with the public, with shopping, disinfecting all item that we purchase online before letting our family use them. At the beginning of the pandemic, I decided not to send my children to school, instead I choose to be a virtual mom. I choose this option because I was scared and I didn’t have enough information about this new infectious disease that we were encountering in the U.S>.

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