06 Jul Retailing Mission
Mission: You are an executive at an up-and-coming retailer. You decide that in order to gain a
competitive advantage that you will go on a virtual retailing mission and assess your
competition and how it functions.
Your specific mission is to take a virtual tour of any store you choose and evaluate its positioning
according to each of the retail strategy elements below. You have decided that for now that you
will simply report on your competitor (i.e., you don’t need to come up with strategies to counter
your competition for now).
The last page contains links to different virtual stores you could visit.
Deliverable (21 points): As your deliverable, please take notes for each of these 5 facets below:
1. Target market: Who is the target market? That is, what is the demographic and
psychographic profile of the ideal buyer? How can you tell?
2. Merchandise: Discuss the depth and breadth of the product line. Talk about how the
merchandise is arranged in terms of style, quality, and display. How is the merchandise
grouped or categorized? How does this appeal to the target customer?
3. Ambience (atmosphere and image): What does the store ambience say about the
target market (tie to demographics, psychographics, shopping behavior)? Give specifics
to show how this store is unique in comparison to competitors – either those nearby in
location or competing in the same category. How does this store use its ambience to
differentiate itself?
4. Location: How would you classify the store’s location (strip mall, shopping center,
business district, etc)? How does the store’s location establish/reinforce its positioning?
You may need to either look up the business online or look at its location on Google
Maps. If you can’t do either of those, explain where you would expect it to be located
and then answer the questions above.
5. Pricing: Now, if you can, visit the webpage of the store and look at the pricing. How
would you describe the pricing policy of this store and what does that tell us about the
target market? Does the pricing support the image conveyed in terms of merchandise
and ambience? If you can’t find the website, explain what you would expect prices to be
like and then answer the questions above.
Please write the name of the store you visited virtually at the top of your notes. Finally, please
make a bolded heading for each facet and provide your notes under each heading. See the next
page for the full rubric.
Retailing Mission Rubric
_______ (points) Was the name of the store listed at the top of the notes? (1 point)
_______ (points) Was each of the 5 facets above addressed? (5 points; 1 point per factor)
_______ (points) Did each facet have a bolded heading? (5 points; 1 point per factor)
_______ (points) Was there enough detail provided under each facet to indicate that there was
a real analysis of the store? (10 points; 2 points per factor)
_______ Total points possible (out of 21)
