Smart Marketing

Target is an ingenious marketer. As this video shows, creativity comes in big things and small. Its stores are planned effectively, well orchestrated with signage, neatly kept, bright and welcoming. There is none of the shelf messes one finds in a Walmart, for example. Presentation is the result of close management and constant aisle patrols to face goods, pick up fallen items and place them back on a rack and neaten displays. One always feels like the first customer in the store rather than the thousandth. This is why the company can boast of the “Target effect”, the impulse to buy more than what one came for in the first place. Merchandising requires constant tinkering to optimize product placement and sales. Customers rarely see the effort but they buy, and that is why Target remains a leading retailer in the era of online shopping.