Target Together

Looking back a few months later, I wonder what exactly was accomplished by the Target Together shindig? While IMHO Target's Christmas season visual displays and decor were better than the previous year, what sticks out in my mind has how much hours have been reduced in stores. We are managing to keep the stores open, but the speed, responsiveness and quality of service is impaired by the lack of manpower (anachronistic term but it's what comes to mind).

Target is in a hyper-competitive business environment. This should be pretty common knowledge, there's no free lunch in the business world. I'm concerned that Corporate's approach to the stores -- including the awkwardly embedded Drive-Up Order and Order Pick-Up services -- is to cut corners on the guest experience shopping with us.

Maybe Target needs to closely look at hourly sales transactions, and consider shortening store hours in order to be more fully staffed at peak revenue-creating times of day. Same payroll hours available per month, maybe in the short term only collecting 98% of the sales revenue, but quickly boosting sales revenue among existing and new guests through better shopping experiences!

How about 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM Monday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Sunday?

There's no free lunch, and if Target must "do more with less", then truncating store hours will maximize the ability of available TMs to provide the level of service excellence which our guests historically experienced when shopping at Target.
 
Looking back a few months later, I wonder what exactly was accomplished by the Target Together shindig? While IMHO Target's Christmas season visual displays and decor were better than the previous year, what sticks out in my mind has how much hours have been reduced in stores. We are managing to keep the stores open, but the speed, responsiveness and quality of service is impaired by the lack of manpower (anachronistic term but it's what comes to mind).

Target is in a hyper-competitive business environment. This should be pretty common knowledge, there's no free lunch in the business world. I'm concerned that Corporate's approach to the stores -- including the awkwardly embedded Drive-Up Order and Order Pick-Up services -- is to cut corners on the guest experience shopping with us.

Maybe Target needs to closely look at hourly sales transactions, and consider shortening store hours in order to be more fully staffed at peak revenue-creating times of day. Same payroll hours available per month, maybe in the short term only collecting 98% of the sales revenue, but quickly boosting sales revenue among existing and new guests through better shopping experiences!

How about 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM Monday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Sunday?

There's no free lunch, and if Target must "do more with less", then truncating store hours will maximize the ability of available TMs to provide the level of service excellence which our guests historically experienced when shopping at Target.
I saw a newsarticle where an email was sent out from corporate that they are eliminating 500 jobs across the corporate and DC side of things to increase sale floor staffing.

So it does sound like they are trying to start increasing hours to some extent. Time will tell if its optics or a genuine effort from the new CEO.
 
IMO, we don't really get a lot of guest volume until about 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning. My thoughts weren't that 8:00 am is a bad time to open, but if Target is desperately trying to control labor cost per hour the store is open, the company could get more "bang for the buck" by using the existing bucket of payroll hours for a somewhat shorter workday. There would be a quite small short-term drop in sales volume. Most retail stores which are similar to us are open 9:30 or 10:00 am until 9:00 pm. Exception would be Walmart, particularly Supercenters. TJ Maxx, Ross Dress For Less, Old Navy, Best Buy, Costco Wholesale generally aren't open the lengthy hours we are. It's just a suggestion. The real solution is to increase in-store staff payroll hours so that our stores can deliver the excellence which our guests associate with our brand from the past (before the cost-cutting caused by the 2013 data breach and 2014-2015 Canada expansion disaster).
 
My store is popping at 8am right out of the gate nearly every morning. No way would our area be ok with us pushing our opening time back.
 

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