Company Overview
The TJX Companies, Inc. is one of the largest international apparel offering off-price fashion products, as it operates such famous chains of fashion stores like T.J.Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods in the U.S. The largest division of the company in the U.S. is Marmaxx, which unites the services offered in T.J.Maxx and Marshalls. The company operates stores under various names in a number of countries, including T. K. Maxx in Ireland, United Kingdom, Poland, and Austria, Trade Secret and Home Secret in Australia, and Winners in Canada.
The company is known for cut-off prices enabling people with a moderate income to buy fashion items for reasonable prices. The TJX Companies, Inc. positions itself as a retailer of fashion products striving for delivering the highest quality of services for low prices. Besides the vision of long-term priorities relying on the combination of cut-off prices with a high quality of products, the company’s CEO claims that the current main objectives include driving customer traffic and comparable stores sales, continuing global store growth, and remaining the leaders in innovation (Meyrowitz, 2015).
The range of products offered in the stores operated by the TJX Companies, Inc. is rather wide. Both T.J. Maxx and Marshalls offer an assortment of fashionable, brand-name family apparel, and home fashions while Marshalls differentiates itself by offering a line of family footwear and extended men’s department. HomeGoods offers home fashions including such products as furniture, kitchen cookware, etc. Sierra Trading Post is another division of TJX. It is an off-price Internet retailer offering products for active families, including outdoor gear, sporting goods, etc.
PEST Analysis
The application of PEST analysis to the TJX Companies, Inc. reveals that the company can be considered lowly sensitive to the changes in a business environment due to the specific advantageous features enabling the company to adjust to harsh conditions.
PEST analysis relies on such macro-environmental factors like political, economic, social, and technological ones (Rugman, & Collinson, 2006). The changes in the political environment appear to have a low influence on TJX, as the products and services offered by the company in its stores do not depend on political decisions and have little relation to the decisions made by the government. The only potential risk related to changes in a political environment is related to the possibility of an introduction of higher obligations and taxes for foreign investors in the countries where TJX stores operate. However, the company mainly relies on the U.S. market and has strong dependence only on the local political environment.
The changes in the economic environment are rather influential for TJX. The negative tendencies occurring in the economic environment leading to the immediate decline of customers’ buying capability. In the case of such changes, the company would experience a severe adverse impact on its revenues as its profitability directly depends on the rates of sales. The changes in exchange rates would also affect the company as they influence the costs of exporting goods, which is a considerable part of TJX’s expenses.
The changes in the socio-cultural environment have a strong influence on TJX. Such social factors as an aging population, population growth rates, career attitudes, etc. directly influence the number of solvent customers in the country (Peizer, 2006). However, TJX seems to have a good potential for keeping the sales high even in the case of negative social tendencies, as the company puts an emphasis on offering moderate prices, which secure the stable demand for the products in the situations affecting the buying potential of the population.
The changes in the technological environment can benefit TJX as technological innovations lead to higher cost-effectiveness. Such changes have the potential for making the supply chain of TJX more efficient due to the technological innovations employed in logistics. Besides, the development of technologies positively affects the ability of TJX to broaden its online retailing services. Therefore, the changes in the technological environment seem to put no threat to the sustainability of TJX and appear to be able to benefit it if the company employs them effectively and on time.
References
Meyrowitz, C. (2015). About us. A message from our chairman and CEO. Web.
Peizer, J. (2006). The dynamics of technology for social change. New York: iUniverse, Inc. Web.
Rugman, A., & Collinson, S. (2006). International business (4th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited. Web.