

They want these shoppers to get used to heading to Target, whether they’re buying in-store or online. It has its sights on markets such as Los Angeles and New York, as well as near colleges, where customers are on the brink of adulthood and developing their lifelong shopping habits, Mulligan said. The company intends to keep opening stores at a rate of 30 to 40 a year, generally focusing on smaller formats. In 2020, its net earnings rose to nearly $4.4 billion, a 33% increase over the previous year.īecause of the lingering uncertainty from Covid-19, Target didn’t provide a financial outlook for 2021, but it did offer a sense of what it has planned. So even as e-commerce grew, Target was able to maintain healthy profits. In terms of costs, they’re more like in-store purchases. But John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, said on the call that online orders that customers pick up themselves are about 90% cheaper on average than online orders shipped from a warehouse. Maintaining separate warehouses for inventory and shipping items can be expensive for retailers. Stores are also crucial to keeping Target’s rising tide of online orders profitable. As a result, Target said in the recent quarter its stores fulfilled 95% of its sales, including in-store purchases, of course, but also orders placed online. In the past year, Target saw a more than 600% increase in curbside-pickup orders and a more than 300% increase in orders via Shipt, the same-day delivery platform it bought in 2017. These services have been popular in the pandemic. The prevalence of Target’s stores allow it to offer most shoppers services such as in-store or curbside pickups of online purchases, where a customer can just drive up to collect their order, or same-day deliveries.

Target’s stores help attract online shoppers, too Target’s nearly 1,900 stores put the retailer within 10 miles of most US consumers, Cornell said, and they were crucial to the nearly $10 billion in online sales Target added in 2020. You’ll receive one order number and confirmation email for items sold by Target, and a separate order number and confirmation email for items sold by Target Plus™ Partners.Retailers like Target and Walmart became essential destinations in the pandemic for cleaning supplies and groceries, and later home goods and activewear, and stores have been a critical advantage in their battle against Amazon.

