Target saw foot traffic fall for the eighth consecutive week, extending a losing streak that began just a few days after the company announced it would end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program in late January.
For the week that began March 17, foot traffic fell 5.7% YoY for Target, according to data from Placer.ai. That’s compared to the 7.1% it fell last week, and an average weekly decline over the last eight weeks of 6.2%.
In a March 4 earnings call, when it reported a 3.1% Q4 loss and a non-specified sales decline in February, Target executives were bullish about its Easter assortment boosting business. But if it has so far, it’s not reflected in the foot-traffic data. What may have taken the spring out of the Easter Bunny’s hop for Target is a 40-plus day boycott coinciding with Lent (so ending on Easter) spearheaded by Black clergy for which more than 150,000 have signed up, exceeding organizers’ stated goal of 100,000.
Target did not respond to a request for comment from Retail Brew about the traffic slump.
At Costco, which unlike Target resisted demands from the Trump administration for private companies to dump their DEI programs, foot traffic has continued to grow. For the same week beginning March 17, traffic rose 5.2% YoY, and marked its 13th straight week of gains over last year.
Donald J. slump: While Target is just one of many companies to capitulate to Trump and get rid of DEI, it may be seeing more of a backlash because of how much it championed racial justice and social justice by name in recent years—before eschewing the terms.
In fact, like Target, Walmart had been on a seven-week traffic decline and McDonald’s on an eight-week decline, but both broke the slump in the week beginning March 17, with Walmart inching into positive territory with a 0.3% YoY traffic gain and Mickey D’s with a 2% gain.
Compared to Target’s average YoY loss of 6.2% over the last eight weeks, Walmart’s average weekly traffic was down 1.6% and McDonald’s was down 3.6%.
Circle back: As consistent as Target’s foot-traffic losses have become, we’re in the midst of Target Circle Week, a mammoth sale and marketing push that began on March 23 and lasts through March 29. It does not coincide with a Circle Week last year, but rather a week which in 2024 was itself down 0.8% compared to 2023.
It’s hard to fathom Target not improving over that when we revisit foot traffic in a week, but we’ll try to suss out an apples-and-apples comparison of how this Circle Week compares to prior ones traffic-wise.
This report was written by Andrew Adam Newman and was originally published by Retail Brew.
