Abstract
This paper delves into Target’s failure to adapt to the Canadian market and why it needed to
close all its Canadian stores after only two years. It looks into why the company’s growth
was unsustainable and notes key factors like major supply chain issues, competitive market,
and customer’s overall negative experience. Furthermore, the paper provides an overview of
warning signs that might have been missed, highlighting operational failures, including
inventory management, failure to cover operational costs of this expansion and misjudgment
or misunderstanding of the markets they were trying to expand into. This paper discusses the
internal and external factors that caused Target to fail in Canada, ranging from customers
feeling dissatisfied with Target's operational failures and slowly losing interest in the store to
Target's unwillingness to change its management style to adapt to the new environment. This
paper also focuses on the organizational development plans that Target had but lacked in
implementing. Following this, the paper looks into the employees' involvement and how the
lack of involvement also added to the company’s failure. Stakeholder and their reluctance to
support Target’s expansion after their initial failures when expanding into the Canadian
market is also explored in this paper. This paper lists good guidelines for change and
investigates whether Target could have succeeded within the Canadian market if it had
followed similar guidelines. This paper was concluded by looking at three lessons that could
be learned from Target’s inability to adapt to Canada’s unique market.
Keywords: business, brand, change, competitors, failure, growth, leader, stores, market