Retail Site Location

CVS is a very popular pharmacy with many locations here in Greensboro. CVS would be considered a free standing store. It is very convenient, has little traffic, and usually is located three to seven miles within a "trading area". The CVS pharmacy location specifically the one located on Spring Garden Street by UNCG is a genius location site.
It is no lie that the most important issue for a retail store is location, location, location. The main advantage for the CVS on Spring Garden is it's convenience. For college students who live on campus and don't have cars, it's a very easy walk to get there for things like medications, face wash, and other essential toiletries. Since, they are a free standing store, their competition is not directly linked to their stores, however their competition could easily be located across the street, such as with the CVS, their competition is Walgreens located right across the street. Since, CVS is located in such a high traffic area, it is easy for consumers, college students, to see this on their drive to school and there is an easy turn into the store on the right side.
A natual disadvantage to a free standing store is that there is hardly an foot traffic, but that is not the case with the CVS located on Spring Garden. Because it is so close to UNCG's campus, they get business from both foot traffic and car traffic. Although the location is great, I think the parking is at a disadvantage also. There is limited parking space, and when a customer parks in one of the first few spots, when they try to back out, they come very close to backing out on the road, and it is inconvenient for other drivers who are trying to come into the store.
Overall, I think this CVS location is very suitable, and does its purpose as a free standing store.

Circuit City

Circuit City was a retailer that sold many electronics such as tv's, stereos, phones, and cameras. Circuit City was the number two retailer in the U.S. for electronics, but in November Circuit City had to file for bankruptcy. The company said that due to economic challenges, they had no choice but to liquidate and that they hope to come back from their bankruptcy as a stronger company (Circuit City, Breaking News). There are many factors that come into play, and there is not just one reason that Circuit City failed.

The closing of Circuit City can be blamed on reasons such as location, no more selling of appliances, and passing up hugh opportunities. Circuit City was said to have bad locations because they were in places that were far away for consumers, and just "out-of-the-way". A setback for them was that they stopped selling appliances, so that made less reasons for customers to want to go there, and they missed a major opportunity to be able to sign with Apple products. Since they passed up that contract, Best Buy took it and is now the number 1 electronics retailer in the U.S. (Hamilton, Time Magazine).

Another major setback for Circuit City was that they did not have an effective website. Online retailing is very important to this new generation of technology. They were unable to keep up with the online competition. A main reason that people say that Circuit City went out of business was because of poor management and bad customer service. Apparently the new CEO of the company thought that getting rid of the older employees that had been with the company for many years would cut costs, and they could hire new employees for a fraction of the cost. Because of this strategy, there have been many complaints about the employees at Circuit City.

I personally believe that Circuit City went under because they were not able to keep up with the changing times. They didn't change much about their marketing, or advertisements, and pretty much kept things the same throughout their sixty years of business. I feel that if they had better marketing strategies, and better employees, they would still have a chance even through these challengings economic times.