WALGREEN'S Has The Green Light!

This weekend I took a visit to Walgreen's on Spring Garden Street, as I do once a month or so, to pick up my prescription. While making my purchases, I was able to look around the store and see not many people there on a Saturday afternoon. I began to wonder why the store was this way. I was hoping that the weather played a huge factor in the slowness of business. This is because this Walgreen's has great advantages in store location.
This particular Walgreen's is a stand-off location right next to UNCG's campus and close to Greensboro residential area so therefore it is in walking distance of many people. It is on located on the corner of two of the busiest streets, Spring Garden and Aycock, so there is tons of traffic, by car and foot just alike but it is managable. It is also right across from a well known homey restaurant, in which they can pick up their customers also. There are also many other businesses around that area that they can pick up customers from too. They also have an excellent parking lot which can accommodate many customers at one time.
Although this store may seem great, this location does have it's downfalls. For instance, one of the company's biggest competitors is located right across the street and has been there way longer than this new store. Therefore they have had years to establish customer loyalty with residents that have been in the area for awhile. Also there is a median that separates the traffic on Spring Garden Street makes it impossible for customers driving on the right-hand side of the road to turn directly into the store's parking lot. If they wish to enter the parking lot, they have to make a U-turn at the light on a tight street. Their other option would have to be to take a left turn at the light onto Aycock Street and wait for oncoming traffic to stop (because there is no light there) so they can pull into the parking lot, near the pharmacy drive-thru, and drive around to the front of the store to park. This is extremely irritating, when it could have been a simple turn if not for the median blocking it off. So to avoid this, many consumers will just go to CVS, which you can get in and out of without a problem.
In the end the goods do outweight the bads. Hopefully this store and location will do well. This store is a good location, I just think they should try to tweak somethings with the city!

Claire's Demise

Time and time again we hear about how the bad the economy is and how dreadful this recession has been. But when you go to your local mall or strip center you are often remind about how true these statements are. Retailers are fighting to keep their companies alive but unfortunately many companies have or are on their way to declaring bankruptcy and are going to be forced to close their stores.

Many factors are involved in the failures of retailers especially in such a bad economy. A store could fail because of no comparative advantage, lack of resources, inadequate marketing, not having an effective target market, not enough traffic in near the location of the store, etc. In the case of Claire's Store, Inc many of these factors played a role in the downfall of this store.

The downfall of Claire's Store was caused by the fact that the Claire's has to wide of a marketing target which is customers ranging from the age of 3-17, whereas one of their main competitors, Icing focuses their target to 17-23(MarketLine, p.1). With a smaller age range, Icing is able to focus their energy and merchandise towards the same age group. Whereas Claire's tries to satisfy different age groups and a lot of money is wasted on merchandising. Another reason why Claire's is failing is because of the shortcoming in anticipated sales. So this created a huge inventory backup. Gene Kahn, the CEO of Claire's Store, Inc stated that "the fiscal 2008 results reflect the difficult economic environment giving rise to a consumer pullback that is impacting retailers around the globe(MarketLine, p.1)." If Claire's wants to turn this situation around, it is going to take a whole new marketing strategy. And also the help of another company to get them out of debt.

This is an unfortunate but common situation and hopefully retailers are learning from the failures of other companies. Retailers need to focus they marketing strategy and plain and use their resources wisely. And hopefully the economy can be restored within the next couple of years.

MarketLine. (2008, April 7). Claire's Stores: new strategies for growth. Retrieved from http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5089696486507553464

MarketLine. (2008, April 4). Claire's Stores Q4 net sales down. Retrieved from http://libproxy.uncg.edu:4944/library/NewsArticleDisplay.aspx?R=8E826C08-2459-4977-9658-669E341E565A