Foot traffic at Target declined for the fourth consecutive month since it rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in January, and a reputation analytics company reports that the retailer’s reputation has suffered, too.
For the month of May, foot traffic fell 1.6% YoY, which while nothing to pop the bubbly over was less grim than previous declines in February (-9%), March (-6.5%), and April (-3.3%), according to Placer.ai. While correlation—we’ll say it again—is not causation, the traffic slump began after Target announced it was rolling back its DEI efforts on January 24, the day after President Trump said he was acting to “abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense…throughout the government and the private sector.”
Costco, which rebuffed calls to dismantle its DEI program, saw its foot traffic increase 5.1% YoY in May, following increases for the previous three months when traffic fell at Target, up 2.2% in February, 7.5% in March, and 3.4% in April, per Placer.ai.
Foot traffic has been down for 16 of the last 18 weeks at Target, inching into positive territory only for the weeks that began April 14, when it was up 0.4%, and April 21, up 0.1%. For the same 18 weeks, traffic was down at Costco for only one of them, falling 2.5% on the week that began April 14.
“This is concerning”: Reputation analytics firm Caliber, meanwhile, has found that Target’s reputational score fell over the same period on multiple metrics, according to data it provided exclusively to Retail Brew.
To the question, “Target is ethical in the way it conducts its business,” which Caliber calls its Governance Score, the retailer’s score fell 15.4%, from 65 (out of a possible 100) in January to 55 in May. Over the same period, the average for the top 30 Fortune 500 companies fell only 1.6%, from 64 to 63, meaning Target began slightly above the average and fell well below it. The scores are based on how strongly respondents agree or disagree with statements on a 7-point scale and, in the statistical parlance of Caliber, are “normalized to 0-100.”
When respondents weighed in on other statements, Target’s reputation score dropped from January to May, too:
- “Target behaves responsibly,” what Caliber calls its Integrity Score, fell 10.8%, from 65 to 58.
- “Target demonstrates leadership,” its Leadership Score, also fell 10.8%, from 65 to 58.
Caliber’s Recommendation Rate—based on responses to the statement that consumers “would recommend Target to others, if given the chance”—is calculated differently. It’s based on how many respondents selected 6 or 7, with 7 being “strongly agree,” and it slipped from 49% in January to 37% in May, a 24.5% decline.
Although those reputational scores are lower in April than they had been all year, Shahar Silbershatz, Caliber’s founder and CEO, noted that they have tended to rise and fall from month to month rather than steadily declining. But with Target, “the rebounds are not as fully bounced back; they just go part way,” Silbershatz told Retail Brew.
“This is concerning,” he continued. “There is a negative trend here. This is going to continue to snowball, and it’s a problem.”
In response to our request for comment about both the foot-traffic and reputational declines, Brian Harper-Tibaldo, director of corporate media relations at Target, pointed us to a passage from the company’s Q1 earnings call on May 21 when CEO Brian Cornell acknowledged the retailer “faced an exceptionally challenging environment that affected our performance with declines in both traffic and sales.” The company reported a 2.4% decline in both online and in-store transactions, which it refers to as “traffic,” while the Placer.ai data calculates only the foot traffic in stores irrespective of whether purchases are completed.
On the call, Cornell attributed the declines to “headwinds,” namely “five consecutive months of declining consumer confidence, uncertainty regarding the impact of potential tariffs, and the reaction to the updates we shared on belonging in January.” (“Belonging” is a reference to DEI, with the company having replaced its now-archived DEI page with one called “Belonging at the Bullseye.”)
Harper-Tibaldo declined to comment on the reputational data.
Dems the breaks: Lending credence to the notion that publicity over its DEI shift led to its reputational slippage is the contrast between Democrats and Republicans.
What Caliber calls its Trust & Like score fell 5 points, to 70, among Democrats, and rose 5 points, to 67, among Republicans, for the period of January 27 to June 3 compared to the previous 127 days. (January 27 was the first Monday following Target’s announcement that it was rolling back DEI.)
Over the same period, Target’s Integrity score among Democrats fell 8 points, to 63, while remaining unchanged at 60 for Republicans; its Recommendation rate among Democrats fell 10%, to 45%, while remaining unchanged at 37% for Republicans.
Silbershatz noted political-affiliation parallels with Tesla, which Caliber also tracks, over Elon Musk’s (now fraying) ties to President Trump.
“It was mostly Democrats that bought Teslas, not Republicans,” Silbershatz said. “Now Democrats are a lot more negative about Tesla [and] Republicans are a lot more positive, but Republicans are not buying Teslas because they’re not interested in electric cars.”
But Silbershatz noted that the shift for Target is not as dramatic—at least not yet—as what has happened at Tesla, where Democrats once rated Tesla’s reputation more highly than Republicans, but now it is the other way around.
“We’re not at that point yet with Target, but that’s where it seems to be going,” Silbershatz said. “You could say it’s net neutral, but it’s not neutral because Republicans are less likely to buy a Tesla. Same thing with Target: It won’t be net neutral if Republicans are less likely to shop at Target.”
This report was originally published by Retail Brew.
