What factors are important in understanding this decision situation?

In the age of Amazon, big-box retailers have been playing catch up. The competitors in this space feel intense pressure to meet customer expectations for shopping convenience, primarily through strengthening their online capabilities. With Amazon and Walmart in the lead, venerable Target also has been pursuing a variety of related initiatives, including streamlining their logistics processes, offering same-day delivery, and going big on small stores. Increasingly though, both consumer spend and Wall Street analysts have turned increasingly less favorable for Target. Can they match Amazon and Walmart in the race for customer convenience?

Target has a rich history of successes. In 1902, George Dayton founded a company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, called Dayton Dry Goods Company. The years that followed yielded a variety of retail format changes, and in 1962, the first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota. It called itself the “new idea in discount stores”—differentiated by merging key department store features with the lower prices of a discounter.

Target rapidly became known as “a store you can be proud to shop in, a store you can have confidence in, a store that is fun to shop and exciting to visit.” The retailer is the eighth largest U.S. retail chain (by annual sales revenues), operating over 1,800 retail locations throughout the United States.