Foot traffic has been down for 16 of the last 18 weeks at Target, inching into positive territory only for the weeks that began April 14, when it was up 0.4%, and April 21, up 0.1%. For the same 18 weeks, traffic was down at Costco for only one of them, falling 2.5% on the week that began April 14.
“This is concerning”: Reputation analytics firm Caliber, meanwhile, has found that Target’s reputational score fell over the same period on multiple metrics, according to data it provided exclusively to Retail Brew.
To the question, “Target is ethical in the way it conducts its business,” which Caliber calls its Governance Score, the retailer’s score fell 15.4%, from 65 (out of a possible 100) in January to 55 in May. Over the same period, the average for the top 30 Fortune 500 companies fell only 1.6%, from 64 to 63, meaning Target began slightly above the average and fell well below it. The scores are based on how strongly respondents agree or disagree with statements on a 7-point scale and, in the statistical parlance of Caliber, are “normalized to 0-100.”
When respondents weighed in on other statements, Target’s reputation score dropped from January to May, too:
Caliber’s Recommendation Rate—based on responses to the statement that consumers “would recommend Target to others, if given the chance”—is calculated differently. It’s based on how many respondents selected 6 or 7, with 7 being “strongly agree,” and it slipped from 49% in January to 37% in May, a 24.5% decline.
Although those reputational scores are lower in April than they had been all year, Shahar Silbershatz, Caliber’s founder and CEO, noted that they have tended to rise and fall from month to month rather than steadily declining. But with Target, “the rebounds are not as fully bounced back; they just go part way,” Silbershatz told Retail Brew.
“This is concerning,” he continued. “There is a negative trend here. This is going to continue to snowball, and it’s a problem.”
Harper-Tibaldo declined to comment on the reputational data.
Dems the breaks: Lending credence to the notion that publicity over its DEI shift led to its reputational slippage is the contrast between Democrats and Republicans.
What Caliber calls its Trust & Like score fell 5 points, to 70, among Democrats, and rose 5 points, to 67, among Republicans, for the period of January 27 to June 3 compared to the previous 127 days. (January 27 was the first Monday following Target’s announcement that it was rolling back DEI.)
Over the same period, Target’s Integrity score among Democrats fell 8 points, to 63, while remaining unchanged at 60 for Republicans; its Recommendation rate among Democrats fell 10%, to 45%, while remaining unchanged at 37% for Republicans.
But Silbershatz noted that the shift for Target is not as dramatic—at least not yet—as what has happened at Tesla, where Democrats once rated Tesla’s reputation more highly than Republicans, but now it is the other way around.
“We’re not at that point yet with Target, but that’s where it seems to be going,” Silbershatz said. “You could say it’s net neutral, but it’s not neutral because Republicans are less likely to buy a Tesla. Same thing with Target: It won’t be net neutral if Republicans are less likely to shop at Target.”
