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July 22, 2025
Are Price-Matching Policies Becoming a Thing of the Past?
It’s the end of another era for Target: The red-and-white brand has announced that its price-matching policy will be heavily restricted, limited to scenarios in which a customer finds the exact same item for a cheaper price at Target’s brick-and-mortar stores, or website, within two weeks of purchase.
Notably, the new policy excludes any price matching of Amazon or Walmart prices, which the retailer had honored previously. The new policy will take effect as of July 28, as CNN Business reported.
With this move, Target joins a number of other retailers who have either scrapped or significantly curbed their own price-matching policies. Amazon does not have a price matching policy — given its market dominance in the ecommerce space and reputation for relative low prices, it may not need to have one — and Walmart wrapped up its larger price-matching policy in 2019. In the latter case, there is a very limited price-matching policy still in place: Items purchased in a Walmart store in the U.S. can be price matched against identical items advertised on Walmart.com, with store managers ultimately having full discretion as to whether to honor any match.
And while Target’s move could be tied to its recent operational woes — stores open at least a year reported a 3.8% sales decline during the most recent quarter — fueled by tariffs and other significant headwinds, times during which price matching was almost something taken for granted by most retail consumers have certainly changed.
Speaking to USA Today, a Target spokesperson pointed toward a broader retail segment trend of moving away from liberal price-matching policies.
“[Eliminating the price match for Walmart and Amazon items] generally speaking puts us in line with what the rest of the industry already does,” the spokesperson said.
Best Buy, Home Depot, eBay, and Others Continue To Offer Price Matching (With Conditions, in Most Cases)
Despite Amazon completely opting out of the price-matching game and Walmart having greatly curtailed its own, some retailers do still engage with the practice.
Best Buy, for example, states that a product “could be eligible for a price reduction if it’s new, identical to the competitor’s product, immediately available at a qualifying competitor’s store or on its site, and not shown on Best Buy’s exclusion list,” per The Verge.
Home Depot, Lowe’s, Dell, HP, Lenovo, eBay, Microsoft, Google, and Newegg also offer some form of price-matching policy, although these are subjected to a substantial number of restrictions and requirements, varying from company to company.
Discussion Questions
Are price-matching policies, at least as they were originally conceived, becoming a thing of the past? Why or why not? What factors could spur a turnaround of the current trend?
Do consumers, broadly speaking, care as much about price-matching nowadays as compared to previous? Is there leverage to be gained by maintaining or instituting a more liberal price-matching policy, or would this end up causing more harm than good?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Frank Margolis
Executive Director, Growth Marketing & Business Development, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Gary Sankary
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
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In the case of Target, this decision is mostly driven by the need to protect profitability – which has been waning over recent years. Scrapping price matching helps with that, even if only marginally. Does it harm perception? It depends. On certain items, like bigger electronics, consumers are hot on price (which is why Best Buy has always price matched). If Target ensures price parity then customers won’t mind. If they don’t, they could lose custom. In other categories, like grocery, price matching requests on individual items are less common. What people tend to assess is the total basket value or cost – and on this area Target has some work to do.
No data was provided to help answer the main question – and unfortunately I can’t add any – but my gut feeling is yes…there’s just too much info available (to even a minimally informed customer) for a retailer to attempt to keep up with what everyone else is doing. And how would this even work with dynamic pricing (or, worse, individualized pricing)?
Dynamic pricing is a dog that won’t hunt. Count on it.
It will go the way of “just walk out”
Yes, price matching will become a thing of the past, but for a simple (and non-competitive) reason. More and more retailers will move to dynamic and differential pricing, so in this scenario they would effectively be competing against themselves.
NOW???? Could the timing be any worse? It’s actually sad
Not if the retailer claims to be in the EDLP business!!!
Retailers have trained consumers to expect price-matching. It sounds like some retailers will have to train their customers to not expect it. That said, most of Target’s pricing is competitive with other retailers, so it should not make a big difference.
Price matching is past its prime (pun intended with Amazon being exempt). Clicks and bricks dynamic pricing, private brand confusion, online marketplaces jammed with third-party sellers selling non-core categories…price matching isn’t tenable in today’s retail environment(s). That’s not to say that isolated instances won’t call for exceptions if customers are making a scene or simply not understanding how things work. Consumers aren’t entitled to lower prices, but have the freedom and power to make decisions based on price.
The thing is, once you offer customers’ a perk, it’s hard to take it away. And that’s what Target is doing. It’s like the car dealership that has always washed your car after servicing it, but stopped to save a few bucks.
Customers who use price matching are generally loyal customers who won’t be happy to see it go.
The days of speaking to the general manager or owner for a price match are long gone, except for the independent stores who still honor it based on set date printed or digital ads. But there are still some chain stores who will match under specific circumstances. Many consumers don’t bother asking anymore as there are more hoops to jump through and not enough savings to be had.
Price matching is a 20th-century anachronism in today’s digitally powered real-time price comparison world. The cultural expectation of price-matching represents an outdated social contract from when retail was primarily relationship-based. Today’s consumers are increasingly transactional, willing to switch retailers and channels mid-purchase for better value. Closer to home, retailers like Target (pre-announcement), which cling to price-matching, are being forced to adopt Amazon’s margin strategy while operating under a higher cost structure, which is economically unsustainable.
I’m scratching my head about this announcement. Price matching, generous returns, these are all customer loyalty schemes. While margin has been an issue on the last Target earnings call, the company has also been struggling with declining store traffic and sales, which makes me wonder about this announcement. I’m very curious how much margin Target gives away on returns. Is it significant enough that it’s worth the negative PR this announcement will generate? I would have opted for a soft policy change.
Price matching is a slippery slope. I agree with Neil, with the exception of big-ticket items, consumers are not likely to change their shopping behavior because they’re paying 10 cents more for a gallon of milk at one retailer versus another. Unless.. and this is a big unless, the aggregate sum of their baskets is significantly higher, in which case shoppers are far more likely to vote with their feet, and shop somewhere else, than try to get price adjustments for a basket full of items. Which leads to declining traffic and sales.
See what I did there?
Just walk out, 2025 style. Uh, no.
This sounds like a policy that made abundant sense a couple of decades ago, back when a retailer might say, “Gee, I can’t have eyes and ears everywhere, so to be sure I am always competitive I will offer price matching.” But these days everyone, retailers and customers alike, does have eyes and ears everywhere. It’s called the internet, and AI. Between retailer due diligence and customer competitive shopping there aren’t too many blind spots. The policy has aged out.