Overview
Once students have determined their case study retailer choice and competitors, HW#1 will be developed as follows:
Retailer: Kohl's
Competitor: Nordstrom, Dillards
During the in-class discussion in Week 1, multiple change issues in the retail industry were identified and agreed on as ones that have made a major impact or shift in the way retailers are changing the way they do business. For this assignment, students will select 3-4 of the change issues identified as ones that their retailer either is excelling or failing in based on research of their retailer's current landscape. In essay format, students will analyze and state the impact or importance of these change issues on the industry in general and then more specifically, analyze and state their retailer’s approach or lack of approach to these change issues.
Next, students will research the 3 competitors – a very brief descriptive overview of how each are competitors (target market, price, promotion, products). Please make sure that the competitors are confirmed as “publicly traded” – not privately held. Last, in a chart format, alongside each of the retailer’s change issue approaches, compare and contrast how each competitor is addressing these change issues. The comparison of these change issues will be part of the introduction to your final pitch deck case study. This analysis should identify the issues in the same way a thesis statement would, as observed in the “best practices” case studies the students will be reviewing in the coming weeks.
With this assignment and the ongoing assignments, please refer to the list of resources on the course syllabus. Please take advantage of these resources to develop detailed, fact-based information on your case study retailer and their competitors. Fact-based informationwill further support your analysis points throughout the assignments. Please include in-text cites in MLA format for all direct quotes and statistics. Resources may include the retailers' website/s but at least 3 additional resources should be used for each part of the project. An MLA works cited page must be included for each assignment. Please see the attached handout for proper MLA format.