Brand Experience Brief: TargetExpress
TargetExpress, the new smaller retail concept from the folks at Target, is intended to offer “an assortment that is locally relevant to meet urban guests’ quick trip wants and needs at an everyday value.” Check out this video audit and analysis to see how it delivers on that mission.
DLYohn Brand Experience Brief TargetExpress from Denise Lee Yohn on Vimeo.
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transcript:
How does a big box retailer go small? Today we’re looking at TargetExpress, the new smaller retail concept from the folks at Target. I visited the company’s first TargetExpress location in Minneapolis – it has announced plans to open 4 more in 2015 including in San Francisco and San Diego.
At 20,000-square-feet TargetExpress is about one-sixth the size of a traditional Target location. It feels larger than a CVS or RiteAid but definitely smaller than Target’s other smaller format concept, CityTarget which I previously featured in a brand experience brief. Those stores range from about 80,000 to 125,000 square feet — the biggest stores, SuperTargets, are about 174,000 square feet.
So of course TargetExpress has fewer products and departments – very little clothes and hard goods — but it is intended to have “an assortment that is locally relevant to meet urban guests’ quick trip wants and needs at an everyday value.” Which means cold beverages near the entrance, groceries and a grab & go food section, household goods, and health and beauty. It has a small but well designed and eye catching technology section and a lot of Target-branded products to appeal to digital-savvy cost-conscious college students.
The store makes good use of digital integration through apps like Cartwheel, a digital couponing program that customers can access through their mobile devices or online through Facebook. There are also posters that integrate with Target’s In a Snap app which lets shoppers buy items by scanning the posters as well as magazine print ads. Signs promote Target Ticket, the company’s digital entertainment service that allows customers to rent and purchase digital copies of movies and television shows and play them back on all the devices they own. TargetExpress also promotes online shopping through signage throughout the store as well as a large pick-up desk right at the front.
The store incorporates all the Target brand cues — bright white and red paint, colorful images, simple but bold signage, and local flourishes. So, for a college student or an urban dweller, it seems TargetExpress offers everything they want and need and nothing they don’t.
TargetExpress seems like the perfect solution to what many people believe is end of the big-box store era which has resulted from increased urbanization, competition from online retailing, escalating commercial real estate costs, and customers’ increasing desire for convenience. Target isn’t the only big box retailer experimenting with new formats. Check out my brief on one of Walmart’s new formats, Walmart Neighborhood Market.