This is an interesting read...well, not so much the story as the comments. This is kind of a placeholder as I have some thoughts on this. However, I have to go to work, so no time to write at the moment.
AFTER WORK: OK, so here's my observation...Target partisans sure can be snobs!! Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I tend to shop at Target. Not because I have much in the way of antipathy towards Wal-Mart, but because Target has a store downtown that is very convenient for me. And, in reading the comments, I agree that some Wal-Marts can be disorganized. But my God, the way some of these people look down on Wal-Mart shoppers is amazing. Target is not freaking Bloomingdale's!!! It's a discount retailer, just like Wal-Mart!! They bring in cheap goods from China just like Wal-Mart. They pay their store employees...well not that much, just like Wal-Mart. Target has better public relations, and that's why I think they skate...that, and Wal-Mart is much more omnipresent in most locales.
Now, I know that the comments posted are mostly from Minnesotans, so there is going to be a pro-Target bias. But, some of those comments about Wal-Mart shoppers are condescending, rude, aloof, and pretty mean. Are Target shoppers inherently better than Wal-Mart shoppers? I doubt it.
Now, I am going to show my Wisconsin bias and state that Shopko is better than either Target or Wal-Mart. The only good thing about outstate Minnesota from a retail standpoint is that there are Shopkos there. If there were Shopkos in the Twin Cities (there won't ever be), I would make it a point to shop there at least sometimes. Oh well, at least I can shop with one Wisconsin company.
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5 comments:
ShopKo, or as Heidi calls it, Shop K-O, is the store for you.
I personally prefer Target over Walmart. I know Walmart has treated at least one person who is a long-term employee rather poorly, and it's someone I care about, so I take umbrage to that. Of course, I'm not sure Target's always been great to people I care about, either :) Mainly I prefer Target because the Walmart on my side of town is always mobbed busy and it's a pain to get there.
You're right, though, some of those Target posters were seriously snobby. I hate that crap.
I miss Prange Way!
Oh yeah, I also like Kohl's best of all.
Now I've got you. I was born in - and spent most of my childhood in - Arkansas: the birthplace of Wal-Mart. Shouldn't this be where my loyalty lies? We shopped at Wal-Mart all the time. When we lived in SD, and WM first came to the Black Hills, my mother got a job there. I have stories and stories of shitty WM shenanigans. The most notorious of which - one that most of have heard - is mgmt scheduling employees for 38 hours, so they wouldn't qualify for more expensive insurance (as they weren't "full-time," being 2 hrs shy of it). She gave them nearly ten years of service, and she had to leave the store briefly to take care of family affairs. When she applied to the store in her new home in WY, they asked my 50-year mother who had worked for them for a decade to take the overnight-stocker shift. (She didn't accept.)
Honestly, I think in the last ten years or so, they've worked hard to become a more benevolent company, but personally, I only shop there when I have to (ie. I need a discount store and am in a town where WM is the only option). It DOES seem more cluttered. I DO run into people that I normally wouldn't run into in a suburban Target store. The fact is, these two stores cater/advertise to people in slightly different income brackets. They just do. (Of course they overlap - this is just a generalization). It's different when you go into the Target on E. Lake and Cedar - where there is no WM option - THAT Target reminds me of a WM. Why is this? A lower income bracket than the SLP Target (for example). Call that snobbishness if you want, but the getting into the topic of cultural norms based on socio-economics is just too long for a comments section.
In the end, I don't shop at WM because I just don't like their products as much as I like what Target offers. Sure, it's all made overseas, mass-produced, but it's still different stuff. I know. I HAD to shop at WM when I lived in WY a few years ago.
As far as Shopko? Can't help you there. It's like "what's the point?" :p
I'm not sure Target's always been great to people I care about, either :)Yeah, you might say that. I'll have to come back to this one as I have to get ready for work, but this is a rich, rich vein. And as you might expect, after my Felliniesque 8 1/2 years at Target HQ, I have a few opinions on the matter. :)
Finally get a few minutes to comment on this one.
As many of you know, I worked for Target for 8 1/2 years before they gave me the Logan's Run treatment back in 2003.
Target is losing now because the winds have shifted. We're living in a down and dirty economy and there's nothing more down and dirty than Walmart. But behind their often crappy-looking stores is an amazing retail machine. They have assembled some of the best merchants in the world and without question the best distribution and logistics teams out there. They are incredibly tough minded competitors and negotiators. I've often believed that we could do away with waterboarding if the CIA would only hire some Walmart buyers to do the negotiating. The terrorists would give them everything.
Target knew they couldn't compete with Wally on price, so they decided to differentiate and that's why the stores are so much better organized and better looking. Amanda is right that some stores aren't always up to the shiny standards you see in the suburbs, but over the years Target has mostly closed stores like the Lake Street location. They would have closed that one years ago, like they did with Broadway/Lyndale, except that it would have caused an uproar at City Hall.
If the economy gets better, Target's fortunes will improve, but until then their differentiation is biting them in the butt.
I could go on for days on this topic, but I'll stop now.
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