Target Holiday Footfall Increases Beat Walmart, Best Buy

While Target TGT will not be reporting fourth quarter earnings until March 3, it appears that store footfall fell their way in the final weeks of the holiday shopping season. They certainly did everything in their power to make the final shopping days as efficient and productive for their guests as possible. That included free same day Drive Up and Order Pickup through 6:00PM on Christmas Eve.

According to Placer.ai Target shopper foot traffic, when compared with 2019, rose a combined 6.2% for seven weeks from November 1st through December 25^th. For the same seven weeks Best Buy BBY traffic was down 11.5% and Walmart’s WMT was down 0.1%.

In fact, according to the same Placer.ai data, state-by-state Target was in positive footfall territory everywhere except the District of Columbia and Hawaii for the seven-week period. Ten states showed double-digit footfall increases, led by Idaho and Vermont.

In an e-mail, Ethan Chernofsky, VP of Marketing at Placer.ai said “Target showed once again the unique strength and customer relationship it has developed. Even with visits down on key shopping days like Black Friday and Super Saturday, and major concerns around supply chain holdups, labor shortages, and COVID cases, the company still drove monthly visits growth even when compared to a strong season in 2019.”

Great Expectations

Expectations vary for how Target’s fourth quarter will finally shake out. Target raised its fourth-quarter forecast to between high single and low double digit year-over-year sales comps. This was up from previous estimates of high single-digit increases. Refinitiv I/B/E/S, believes Target’s holiday quarter sales should rise by more than a third versus 2019.

However, the increases to costs of goods along with supply chain pains are likely to take a bite out of margins, dropping to an estimate of 25.35% from 2019’s 27.10%. On the positive side the margin hit is a result of not passing some of those increases on to their guests as other retailers did during the same periods.

Keeping Things Organized

Target’s research shows that we associate our wellbeing with being organized, and because we are spending more time at home, they just launched their newest private brand, Brightroom to help us with our war on clutter.

The line features a range of containers and organizers including shelving units, plastic tubs and totes, storage baskets, and closet organizers. The offering includes 450 items, with most under $25. The new private label nicely complements Room Essentials, which was originally launched in 2003 and is one of the oldest of the over forty-five brands created by their in-house teams. Brightroom began appearing in Target stores and on Target.com this week, with additional items expected by early March.