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Are weekend deals the key to Target's holiday success?

Written by RetailWire Staff
Target is the place for shoppers to be on the weekends leading up to Christmas, so the chain is bringing back its weekend deals promotion for the second holiday season in a row. Twice as many guests shop Target on weekends than on an average weekday, according to a press release about the seasonal deals. And so, for the rest of 2018, the chain will announcing deals for the coming weekend every Wednesday in its A Bullseye View newsletter. And as part of the deal promotion, the chain has also rolled out flash deals that have a more limited duration than a full weekend. On Dec. 2, one of the first in this year's campaign was 10 percent off on the purchase of a Target GiftCard available only on that Sunday. The deal was good both in-store and online. Target has begun to gain traction over the past couple of years against competitors — primarily Walmart and Amazon — that eclipsed them earlier in the decade. The retailer entered the holiday season on the momentum of a 13-year high in quarterly same-store sales. It has also begun touting itself as "America's easiest place to shop." The chain's holiday strategy, however, has fluctuated considerably each of the past couple of holiday seasons, as have the results. During Christmas 2015, the chain launched a massive holiday marketing campaign called its "Holiday Odyssey." The campaign featured Neil Patrick Harris as the narrator of a holiday e-book and a number of commercials featuring toys and characters from the branded properties Target was selling. There was also an experiential New York City pop-up with interactive attractions based around each of the characters that appeared in the commercials. In Christmas 2016, Target went with a more deal-centric strategy. The company experienced a 1.3 percent same-store sales decline which the chain later attributed to promotions that were too numerous and too frequent. Last year, Target focused on the introduction of private labels as well as on offering more "meaningful promotions" like the weekend deals. It also introduced an e-gifting system.

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