As backlash against Target for caving on its DEI program in late January continues, including a 40-day boycott organized by Black faith leaders that began March 5, the company saw foot traffic fall for the fifth consecutive week, according to Placer.ai data.
Foot traffic was down 4.7% YoY at Target for the week that began February 24, a week when foot traffic was down less than 1% at Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonald’s; and was up 1% at Best Buy. At Costco, which defied calls to end its DEI program—and where many commenters on Target’s social media feeds have said they’re shopping instead of Target because of its DEI backsliding—foot traffic rose 6.7% YoY for the week of February 24, and had been up for the previous four weeks as well.
Retail Brew asked Target to comment on the traffic data, and whether it believed the DEI backlash has had an impact. Target did not respond to our questions directly, referring us instead to a press release about its Q4 earnings that makes no mention of DEI. The press release did claim that both online and foot traffic were up 1.4% for Q4, but the quarter ended on February 3, mostly outside of the scope of the full month of February and early March we’d asked about.
Quarter pounder: We’ll say it again, not just because it’s alliterative but because it’s true: Correlation is not causation.
Still, we’re not seeing numbers that suggest Target is exactly benefiting from its DEI capitulation, either. Target acknowledged in a March 4 earnings call that February sales were down compared to last year (without saying by how much), and CEO Brian Cornell offered a cornucopia of reasons that did not include the DEI backlash, including cold weather, floods, fires, and a dip in consumer confidence.
Lola Bakare, author of the 2024 book, Responsible Marketing: How to Create an Authentic and Inclusive Marketing Strategy, said those external factors—“headwinds” in earnings call parlance—are real, but that Target has made itself more susceptible to them by rejecting DEI after championing social justice and racial justice to its customers in recent years.
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“If the competition for discretionary spending is harder than it’s ever been, you need to make sure that you’re at the top of the list,” Bakare told Retail Brew. “And Target put themselves at the bottom of the list with the people who care about them most.”
Target reported revenues were down 3.1% YoY when it released its quarterly earnings on March 4. Costco released its quarterly earnings two days later: Revenues were up 9.1%.
Protest vote: The fact that Target recently passionately championed diversity may be why it appears to be drawing more ire for rolling back DEI than other brands that backpedaled.
Placer.ai compared the “economic blackout” day when participants spent nothing, Friday, February 28, to the closest-to-a-year-ago Friday: March 1, 2024.
For that recent Friday, foot traffic was down 9.5% YoY at Target, while it fell less for other companies that dumped DEI programs, namely Walmart (-6.3%) and McDonald’s (-3.8%). At Costco, traffic fell just 0.1%.
On Target’s social media feeds, meanwhile, the top commenters continue to be people who say they’ve taken their business elsewhere, often sounding not just disappointed but betrayed.
“Target I loved you but it’s over between us,” @teammercier9 wrote on March 2 in response to a Target Instagram post. “It’s not me, it’s you.”
If Target has responded directly to such consumer sentiment, either on social media or elsewhere, Retail Brew has yet to discover it or managed to get the company to respond to us directly about the backlash.
Bakare said that Target’s apparent strategy of waiting for it to blow over isn’t working, and that the company would be better off acknowledging its customers’ criticism and disappointment, even if it hasn’t arrived at a perfect response to appease them.
“It could be as simple as Target saying, ‘We care so deeply about all of our loyal shoppers, we hear your disappointment, and we want you to know that we are working tirelessly to figure out our next step,’” Bakare said. “‘We don’t want to do anything without fully thinking through what it means to be true to you, the people that we care most about.’”