Macy's Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Macy's - Term Paper Example Macy’s over the years has had a long and eventful history to get where it is today. Macy’s was the first retailer to promote a woman to an executive position, making business history. Furthermore, Macy’s, also, pioneered business practices like the one-price system, one price for an item to sell to everyone, and advertising prices for goods in newspapers. Furthermore, the also were the first store to sell tea bags, the Idaho baked potato, and colored bath towels, even the first store to hold a New York liquor license. By 1918, Macy’s was starting to average $36 million in annual sales. And the immigrant employees, in 1924, to celebrate their new American Heritage, organized the first Christmas Parade which featured floats, bands, animals from the zoo and 10,000 onlookers. This became the Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Macy’s has grown over the years by acquiring other stores and renaming them Macy’s as a way to expand their bra nd. Federated Department Stores (now known as Macy’s Inc.) bought R.H. Macy & Co. in 1994, and then renamed all their regional nameplates to Macy’s and in 2006, Macy’s acquired The May Department Store Company and converted all their regional nameplates to Macy’s. These acquisitions, eventually, led Macy’s to grow to over 800 stores covering virtually every major geographic market in the United States, plus they also have their internet sales through macys.com. Control of Economic Indicator The economic indicators are controlled by various governmental agencies, such as the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Bureau of Labor. Most economists and investors pour over the compilation reports from these agencies, like tea leaves, (Steiner, 2009) for any signs of economic improvement. They are looking for trends that will likely increase consumer spending, especially, since nearly 70% of the GDP of the United States is tied up in con sumer spending. There are five main economic indicators that are being looked at to determine if the economy is going to get back on its feet. These five indicators are consumer-related indicators which include: employment, retail sales, personal income and outlays, consumer price index, and new home sales. These five indicators detail consumer spending, sales by retailers, details the amount of inflation or deflation (consumer price index), new residential sales to the public, and the unemployment rate (the higher the unemployment rate, the less likely people are to buy consumer based products, unless they are necessities). The reports are written by the government agencies that compile them, such as the employment situation is written by the Bureau of Labor and has pages upon pages of data showing the amount of employees added to and subtracted from the workforce. Economic Indicator Collection The economic indicators are calculated, after a thorough collection of the appropriate s tatistical data needed to perform the calculation. For example, the Bureau of Labor receives a report from all employers each month which indicates how many employees that was added to an employer’s payroll as well as how employees were removed from the payroll. Then, to get the unemployment rate, the number of unemployed people is divided by the number of employable people. This gives us the percentage of how many people are unemployed currently. But, this unemployment rate can further be broken down into the various industries to see which industries have a higher unemployment rate than