Foot traffic at Target fell for the ninth consecutive week, even though the week included all but one day of Target Circle Week, the retailer’s seasonal deep-discount sale.
For the seven days that began March 24, one day after the latest Circle Week began, foot traffic fell 3.8% YoY, according to data from Placer.ai. Credit Circle Week for this being the smallest YoY drop in the nine-week plunge, when traffic has been down as much as 8.8%.
While correlation—we’ll say it again—is not causation, note that Target’s traffic slump began in the first full week after it announced it was dismantling its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The retailer also is the subject of a 40-plus day Lenten boycott spearheaded by Black clergy that continues through Easter.
Target in recent years championed social justice and racial justice, and since ditching DEI, it has faced steeper traffic declines than other brands that did, too. Also just in, for example, is monthly data, with Target traffic down 6.5% in March compared to last March, following a 9% YoY monthly drop in February. Fellow DEI backtrackers did not see traffic fall as dramatically, with Walmart down 3.8% in March and McDonald’s down 1%.
As for how this Target Circle Week stacked up to Circle Weeks for this same season in previous years, foot traffic was down 2.4% compared to the Circle Week that began April 7, 2024, and down 5% compared to the one that began March 5, 2023, per Placer.ai.
Target did not respond to Retail Brew’s request for comment about the traffic decline.
In a March 16 press release in advance of Target Week, Cara Sylvester, EVP and chief guest experience officer at Target, said it would be “our best Target Circle Week yet.”
Kirkland-slide: At Costco, which stood by its DEI program in spite of calls from the Trump administration for private companies to end them—and where many commenters on Target’s social media posts say they’re shopping instead because Target ditched DEI—foot traffic is tickety boo.
The latest data finds Costco swaggering into its 14th straight week of foot-traffic gains, although its YoY gain for the latest week, 13.5%, is less impressive than it sounds: Easter fell during the last week of March last year, and unlike Target, Costco was closed for that Sunday, meaning this year’s seven-day week was compared to six days last year.
For the total foot traffic for March, Costco was up 7.5% compared to Target’s aforementioned drop of 6.5%.
Lola Bakare, author of the 2024 book, Responsible Marketing: How to Create an Authentic and Inclusive Marketing Strategy, told Retail Brew the numbers look grim for Target: “It’s going to be hard after this long of a time period of continuous declines for Target, not to face that they may be falling out of favor consumer-sentiment wise in a way that’s very serious and isn’t going to go away.”
This report was written by Andrew Adam Newman and was originally published by Retail Brew.
