storewanderer wrote: ↑November 14th, 2022, 5:47 pm
arizonaguy wrote: ↑November 14th, 2022, 3:57 pm
I was in a recently remodeled Target in North Phoenix (I-17 / Loop 101) and I was shocked as to how much square footage they dedicated to women's beauty supplies. They had the normal (if not expanded in size) beauty department on the same side of the racetrack adjacent to cash registers and then they had a large Ulta Beauty department directly across the racetrack from the registers. These two areas combined probably are around the same size as their normal HBA area adjacent to the Pharmacy if not larger. It seemed like a really poor use of space and seemed a bit overstocked in this category. I also didn't notice much customer traffic in either beauty area.
Target space allocations are off in their stores in various departments. I think the chain is being run in middle management/corporate by inexperienced idealistic young people who do not seem to know what they are doing in a lot of cases and this is the end result. Yes they get it right sometimes but they seem to get it quite wrong a lot of the time too.
Target has gotten too arrogant and having a condescending attitude toward the customer- you will take this the way we want to give it to you and you will like it. If you don't like it, tough luck. They seem to continue to double down on going after the female customer who they think is 80% of their sales, and continue to forget about the male customer. Target does not listen to paying customers enough. They may do a lot of surveys and focus groups but somehow the data they are getting out of those groups is not reflective of the actual shoppers who actually spend money in their stores. Or people who take their surveys/focus groups are not responding honestly/accurately in those surveys/focus groups vs. how they actually behave when they shop in the stores.
Target, for better or worse, used to maintain three basic prototypes and had the same footage allocations in each one. There would be space for local assortment in each "block" but the "blocks" stay the same size in each prototype (Regular, super, Greatland). For example in a regular store maybe Toys was a 6 aisle block, in Greatland it was 8 aisles, and in Super it was 9 aisles. There may be a regionalized mix in the block, but the space stays the same in the prototype/format. Now they let computers think for them and it creates chaos in the footage allocated so some departments just disappear or reduce to nothing while others are oversized for seemingly no good reason. For example the system might decide in the next remodel for a store that Beauty was a good performer, so increase footage and SKU depth 20%, but take the space from Office Supplies and Automotive by reducing each section by 20%. In both of those reductions they wind up eliminating double facings but maintain depth of SKUs. This is a good trade off. But Target has been remodeling remodeled stores (while creating "second class stores" like the neglected Reno one mentioned in many posts that finally got a basic remodel). When they remodel the remodel the same mindset applies and the second round really kills the store. In the example above on a second remodel the system will say "wow, last time we increased the Beauty department 20% in size we saw a 20% sales lift. This time let's add another 40% to the footage - but we don't have any more SKUs to add so it'll just be a bunch of double facings which should surely drive more sales. Now reduce office supplies and automotive again, those sales are underperforming because they're flat after the last remodel. Cut the footage and SKU count 50% in those two departments at this store all the way down to what we put in a express location.". Can you see where this goes wildly wrong? This is how a store gets really lopsized assortments like the one in Phoenix described above. If Target really is 20% online sales as they are now reporting then increasing facings is probably delivering a zero sales increase now since their order pullers are now using optimized software that pulls from backroom stock before sales floor - and the SKU reductions do take away real sales - which causes their space planning systems to take away more space in the next remodel or reset. It sounds like Target is realizing this is a problem with this new format as they very loudly state it has "Target's full line in every department", but they don't exactly have 150K square feet in every store to fix the problem in existing stores. It may also be the reason why the absolute latest remodels (which are finishing up all over Portland Oregon amongst other places) seem to do almost nothing aside from installing new signage, a little bit of rearranging but very minimal layout change, lighted department signage and the new really bright hanging lights over checkout. Maybe they have realized that they are screwing up the assortments too much in these remodels and they need to just make minimal tweaks and refresh of worn areas.
As far as the focus groups and testing goes - it seems like new prototype builds wind up in Texas most of the time because it's the only place where Target is building mass numbers of full size stores. The last new prototype a few years ago was also in the Houston area, and based on the upcoming store listings the next store large enough to be this "new format" will also be in Katy, TX - two new format stores in same town. But the focus groups and testing all happen in Minneapolis which just isn't a realistic test program. Everyone in Minneapolis area pretty much knows someone who works at Target if they don't work there themselves, so they are going to get skewed results in focus groups. For a very short time Target had some new leaders who recognized this was a problem and established a 25 store test group in the Los Angeles area so they could make better decisions about new initiatives. That program was killed almost as fast as it was launched, by the time the remodels were completed the whole thing was mothballed because the executives from Minneapolis didn't want to fly to California all the time to check on their test stores. This just gets worse - reading Target PR about the new format - they never left the corporate office and instead used VR headsets to "walk the new store" as they were making layout changes etc. so nothing was really tested in a real building before it went into the new format.