Comparative Shopping Assignment

Purpose of the Assignment

Comparative Shopping Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to give the student an opportunity to get out and examine retailing strategy from an objective, professional, and non-consumer point of view. It is critical that you approach this from a strategic viewpoint and integrate as much of the course material as possible.

Instructions: Students should choose two stores selling the same classifications of merchandise, e.g. Holt Renfrew and Winners.  Another alternative would be to choose two departments within different department stores as long as they sell the same classifications, e.g. Juniors at The Bay and Juniors at Sears.  Students could even choose one department within a department store and one specialty store with the same merchandise classifications, e.g. Harry Rosen and the men’s suit department at The Bay.  In the past, a student selected Penningtons and the Plus Size department at Reitmans.

Students are required to collect information on the two stores or departments by interviewing a manager or supervisor, researching the company online, visiting the corporate website, etc. For this reason, you should try to select organizations that have information available (i.e a corporate website/annual reports/a marketing plan, etc.)
In the formal interview, you should be sure to have some questions thought out in advance. Also, you should document, with footnotes, information which was obtained by the store, or by secondary sources of information.

The written phase of the project is to develop a retail plan using the Retail Matrix P’s as outlined in the textbook. 

First, what is the description of the target markets being addressed by both of the stores or departments. Set this up in the background section. This section should be as specific as possible. 

The second section of the paper consists of a comparison of strategies between the two stores or departments using the seven P’s of the “Retailing Mix”.

Kindly keep in mind that this is a MAJOR TERM PAPER. You have 12 weeks to complete it and the expectation is that the final submission will reflect efforts over that entire time. I will be grading the paper/assignment with the expectation that the student has been working on this submission for some time, I kindly remind you that it is not something that should be done in the two days before the due date. If that is the case, it will be evident in the submission and your grade will clearly reflect that lack of effort.

Please understand that late assignments will not be accepted.  Failure to upload assignment into designated “dropbox” due to technical issues is not an acceptable excuse.  Please do not leave it to the last minute to upload your assignment to avoid such technical issues as internet access or other computer difficulties.

Expectations:

1. I will grade work beyond the 8-page limit without penalty.

2.Always reference you work. Watch out for Plagiarism.  If you are not sure what this is - refer to the student manual.  It is crucial that you understand.  It is your responsibility not to plagiarize another author's work.

3.Double-spaced is required.

4.Use diagrams, figures, and tables where appropriate.

5.Try to include resources, other than simply the textbook, in your answer.  A more complete understanding of the topics in these chapters can be achieved by researching some of the suggested websites listed for each chapter.

6.Please feel free to ask questions about any part of this assignment that you are unsure of. I require that your document is submitted in MS word doc or docx document. If you do not submit your assignment in the appropriate format, and I cannot open it, it will not be graded and you will not be given more time to re-submit. So please, make certain that you have followed these instructions.