In order to win Holiday, develop a strategy to deliver a compelling assortment and innovative omnichannel shopping experience throughout the entire season. As you consider your strategy, make sure to consider how to drive sales and traffic consistently through the season. Your strategy should effectively leverage sales channels (stores/.com/mobile) at various points throughout the season. Use the framework of the 4 Ps to brainstorm ideas for how you would approach this challenge as a buyer within one of Target’s Kids’ categories.
1. Product / Assortment: How should Target differentiate its assortment online and in stores? Would you offer channel-specific product exclusives? Why?
2. Price: How will your pricing strategy differ by channel, if at all? Determine a profitable pricing strategy for the entire season. When is it important to price aggressively?
3. Promotions: How will your promotional cadence vary throughout the season? How and when will you leverage stores/.com/mobile to drive your strategy? How will you deliver relevant promotions during the middle of December? How can you create an omni-channel promotional event and what is the best timing for this? What tools will you use or develop to support your promotions (think Cartwheel, Twitter, Wish List, Instagram, Facebook, etc.)?
4. Place / Supply Chain: How will you use Free Shipping, Store Pickup and Ship from Store to differentiate and drive your strategy?
Other Considerations for this Challenge:
• Product Categories: Kids’ categories span many product categories at Target. What categories should Target prioritize for Holiday? Are there certain categories that are more appropriate for stores or Target.com? Why? Pay special attention to categories where Target can differentiate itself from the competition. Are there certain Kids categories Target doesn’t carry that it should?
• Team: How should digital and store buyers approach decisions about assortment, pricing, and promotions? Remember, the guest demands consistency across channels. What other issues might you consider in planning with buyers in other departments and categories?
• Stores: Remember to consider store execution in how your strategies will be implemented. Are there risks you should consider? In what other ways can you use store team members to help drive an omni-channel Holiday strategy?
• Marketing: How should Target engage guests, and in what channels, to advance your Holiday strategy? Think of the many touch points guests have with the Target brand and consider which of these touch points is most impactful during the Holiday season. Also consider the channels where consumers are going to get gift ideas and inspiration. (Think print media, sites like Pinterest, and other mediums). If you would like to select a specific category within Kids, feel free to choose from the divisions below:
• Electronics: Mobile, TV/Audio, Portable Electronics, and Video Games • Toys: Dolls/Plush, Games/Action Figures/Diecast, Preschool/Seasonal • Entertainment: Music, Movies, and Books
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
