Retail Watchers

To me, it seems that Target has been positioning itself for years as the store for people who are too cool to shop at Walmart, and over time it is becoming cost that this is not a winning strategy in the long term.

Brian Lutz wrote:To me, it seems that Target has been positioning itself for years as the store for people who are too cool to shop at Walmart, and over time it is becoming cost that this is not a winning strategy in the long term.

That strategy worked as long as the merchandise supported the strategy. When they pared back on the "cool" merchandise their "cool" customers pared back their purchases.

Its been open a few months now and the more recent Yelp reviews of this store aren't great:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/target-phoenix-16?osq=Target

arizonaguy wrote:Its been open a few months now and the more recent Yelp reviews of this store aren't great:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/target-phoenix-16?osq=Target

To be fair, one of the September reviews says you can't review a Target, ShopKo, or Walmart and dings them for having a Starbucks in the store when there is one in the parking lot. I don't count that as a review. It feels like the other review is more a criticism of the concept than of the store itself. The Tiny Target in San Diego called out it was a "Target Express." The new strategy is to call everything Target. Bad move!

There is one review which faults the grocery selection. The closest Target is a SuperTarget that has a full-line grocery store, including meats, bakery, produce, and deli. Can't recall whether the deli is full-service, but they do have quite a large selection. You really can't do all of your grocery shopping at a regular Target. Again, a problem with the concept, not the store itself.