Target isn't the only retailer doing this

@phendrick @mbersiam
I look at Target as an unequivocally better alternative to the community extraction vulture that is Walmart.

Plus their RedCard gets me 5% off all day, every day. And I max the sales where I can stack that. The grocery section in my Target isn’t half-bad, and those $5 off $50 grocery coupons mean a 14.5% savings on whatever groceries are on my list. Tillamook cheese? Same as the local grocery, but not 15% off at the local grocery. Same for quite a few of the same items I get elsewhere when Target isn’t running a sale.

I agree, there’s a reasonably small set of items that I get from Target, and I get them from Target because they have the best prices on those items. But that’s not any different than any other place I shop.

And there are some things I begrudgingly still have to get from Walmart, unfortunately.

@phendrick In the early ’90s, my dad used to travel from NJ (where he lived) to Atlanta every week for work. At the time Target wasn’t everywhere yet, but they were there. He used to come home and talk about this great store they had, with bright lights and wide aisles, and it was so clean. Compared with the standard at the time, Target really was special. I think part of why it doesn’t feel that way anymore is that the things they were doing became more standard or expected.

@phendrick I never really want to targe when I lived near one because when I did Meijer was across the street and they were down the road and Meijer is a better grocery store with better deals.

For general merchandise Walmart was across the street from target and cheaper. And every bit as clean/large. I have been in smaller/dumpier Walmarts but they are the only big box in the area so… Not like you can compare them to target.

@mike808 @phendrick yeah i shop at walmart maybe twice a year. I avoid them too.

@phendrick maybe target has better clothes? How you measure that idk. I work from home so shorts. Or sweats. Outside the house jeans and a shirt. I don’t have a woman to dress me so. I will admit that’s a large section of the store that I don’t engage in

Compared with the standard at the time, Target really was special.

@kostia @phendrick This was one aspect that set them apart. The higher ceilings at Target felt more open and inviting versus the other chain stores of the 1990s and earlier.

Walmart has since taken the open ceiling approach, but their merchandise mix still tends towards basics. Target knew it wouldn’t be able to compete on price alone, so they went with offering better style/quality instead. They pay their employees more too.

(I would have said just visit a Kmart and you’ll notice the huge difference since their last new store was in the early 2000s, but given that there’s only 3 remaining in the 50 states, odds are there’s no Kmart nearby anymore.)

@phendrick @unksol

I think Target is way more fashionable than Walmart,and attracts segments of shoppers for that reason. They have partnered with some notable design sources to get good looking stuff into the stores. Tho now Target’s “good looking stuff” is less noteworthy compared to the competition (Walmart &mason mostly I suppose) than once upon a time

@kostia @narfcake @phendrick lol I was going to say. Look to Kmart for the dumpy run down look. But I think the last dying one was pre 2010. Sears wasn’t even THAT bad. Although sears bought Kmart and was a close second for a ghost town.

The death of craftsman is the only thing there I care about

Although sears bought Kmart …

@unksol Other way around – Kmart bought Sears. And management brought both down together. Instead of cooperating, divisions were set up to fight one another over resources. In the quest for short term profits, quality and service suffered, which lead to the present day status of the stores.

@kostia @narfcake @phendrick @unksol I’m a woman and the only reason that I went to our Sear’s at the mall was for Craftsman tools or if they were the cheapest around when my car needed new tires etc. The rest of the store Deadsville.

@yakkoTDI ok, from an employee (or potential employer) standpoint i can understand this one. But i’m talking more about the moms who get excited to go shopping at Target or say they need their “Target fix”, etc. It’s weird and feels culty to me.

@mbersiam Not his best writing but it is still John Hughes. Also, that is Brett from Pulp Fiction.

@djslack I heard that they sell the clearance stuff to Goodwill, but I have no idea if that’s true. One of the first places I go in any store is the clearance rack. You can get some good deals if you don’t care about having the latest and greatest of everything.

@fogey2017 Were you buying something with an age restriction? I think Target has programmed their registers to require it to verify your age, and they can’t let the 17-yo cashier sell you alchohol. This way, it is “the computer” verifying your eligibility for purchase, not a minor “selling” you alchohol or other regulatorily age-restricted items. Because for the purposes of “sale”, the cashier is the legal person “selling” you the liquor or whatever (ABC or ATF-regulated, maybe some chemicals?)

Not justifying it or saying it is a great solution, just explaining that why it is that way may not be just to annoy @fogey2017.

@fogey2017 @mike808

I wasn’t buying anything that required me to even show ID.

He said he wasn’t

@chienfou @fogey2017 Odd that he didn’t ask why they needed his ID to accept cash payment, or share their response if he did. Very odd.

That does not sound like any corporate policy to require random customers to present ID with no clear requirement to do so. Very odd.

There are items that maybe he didn’t think required ID, but Target’s regulators or terms of resale require them to do so. Perhaps gift cards? If so, they would have been able to articulate those reasons. Very odd indeed.

@fogey2017

Target is well documented as being one of the most aggressive and creative-or-invasive stores re customer tracking/customer data profiling.

Some history on this can be found in Duhigg’s The Power Of Habit. They profile everything a costumer does that they can track, and market/advertise to that, granular specific to the individual customer, if they can.

Target has made, since Duhigg first contacted them, s policy of blocking employees from discussing these practices with reporters snd writers.

Persons who have used their app or connected to their Wifi amd then used a browser (using various phones to get cleaner results), have seen differences in incentives. and sometimes in pricing, offered vary according to moving the potential customer location from the back to the front of the parking lot, customer not even being inside the building.

(Front of parking lot means customer is already likely to come in, and is shown minimal incentives. Back of parking lot suggests customer might not bother getting out if the car, and then means app/webpage offers more aggressive incentives/pitches, or offers somewhat lowered online prices, some of which might be matched in store).

Target’s practices might be the norm now for big box retailers, but they have innovated aggressively compared just about everyone other the Amazon in this area.

They might well want your id because, if you pay cash, you’re stripping them of the ability to track/profile you (unless they use face matching, Wifi ID and other phone info tracking to identify you, etc etc. and they do use all that.

I don’t know whether they sell the data or hold it in-house.

But, now, all the big players do this, I suppose.

Here’s a link to a provocative article from a decade ago; tho some analytics people consider the news story and resulting “hot chatter” to be exaggerated/overblown.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=257294456668

@f00l @fogey2017 That’s interesting. Years ago my brother cashiered there. He’s an incurable smartass, and he’d joke with the customers. One girl wanted to pay in cash, and he said “Okay, but you’ve gotta have a guaranteed cash card.” She said, confused, “Oh … I don’t have one” and he had to hastily reassure her that he was kidding. How ironic if his silly joke is now actual practice there!

@chienfou @fogey2017 @mike808 I was in line at a Walmart*about 15 yrs ago and some teenage kids ahead of me were trying to buy the movie Office Space, but they could’nt because it’s rated R. Knowing the movie well I said give me your money and I’ll buy it. I told them there was just some swearing in it. They appreciated me for doing this.
*Only at Walmart because our Target closes at 10 pm.

@chienfou @fogey2017 @growyoungagain @mike808 how in the hell was office space rated R… I mean. Ok there is that one snuff scene but printers weren’t self aware AIs in the 90s

@chienfou @fogey2017 @growyoungagain @unksol

Maybe it was the fucking TPS reports?

@katbyter You would be surprised at the effect of advertising targeting (and unfortunately sexualizing) adolescent children over unrealistic body images. Shocked, I was, when I noticed it. But they don’t intentionally mean for selling makeup to little girls to make them look good for the cameras and selfies, just like their older teenage siblings, yound adult caretakers, idols on their Instagram/TikTok feeds, and parents. Or worse parents using their children as props, to make the kids look good for the camera too.

And then there’s all those new “influencers”, Finstas, TikTokers, and OnlyFans content producers that need to look good for the cameras.

What do you think all the ads during whatever Kardashians show is on are selling?

@blaineg Not the best version of the old meme, but the only one I could find.

@mycya4me You should suggest they hold Mehrathon-type events.