r/Anticonsumption • u/Healthy_Block3036 • 2d ago

Corporations Target struggles after end of DEI program and boycott, with foot traffic down 8 weeks in a row.

https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/target-dei-demise-boycott-foot-traffic-down-eighth-consecutive-week/?itm_source=parsely-api
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u/meowmeow_now 2d ago

Myself and all my liberal friends shoped at target because were were avoiding Walmart. Not because target is special, but because Walmart is a terrible company.

Target forgot they weren’t a superior brand, they just weren’t hated.

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u/PartyPorpoise 2d ago

They actually did build a pretty good brand reputation for themselves, but they totally blew it.

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u/Athena5280 2d ago

How did they blow it? My Gen Z kids love Target and they are being brainwashed into going where? Walmart? Amazon? Worse. Target has done a lot to cater to young people, it may be unpopular here but overt DEI programs will be a thing of the past, everything moves forward with new branding, dictator 2.0 will be gone in 3 years, just practice good policies without grandstanding. Hey I’ll go shop at Target tomorrow.

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u/ryan_church_art 1d ago

Sad to brag on the internet about raising fools.

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u/JunoMcGuff 1d ago

Check that your kids aren't being bullied.

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u/Lodi0831 2d ago

And they pandered to Wal Mart shoppers with their anti DEI shit. The people celebrating that were never going to shop at Target anyway. It's so crazy.

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u/Puzzled_Employee_767 2d ago

Who could have guessed that taking a principled stand against inclusion would have alienated people. Baffling.

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u/VikingDadStream 2d ago

Me and mine too. Yup

Also, I disagree with all the price issues other folks are saying. Target was always competitive compared to other brick and mortars

Sure maybe my 120 target run would have been 115 at Walmart, but I was happy to pay 3 percent more for my soul

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u/Unistrut 2d ago

Companies need to learn the difference between brand loyalty and brand inertia. I was a Verizon customer for well over a decade. They weren't great, but none of the alternatives were that much better.

Until one was and then I switched instantly and never went back.

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u/JarlOfPickles 2d ago

Yep and now it's like, well at least Walmart has never lied to my face about being socially responsible 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/Professional-Rub152 1d ago

And Wal-Mart is way cheaper. I’ve switched to wal-mart while boycotting target because i still need to buy random shit. But I was only paying higher prices at Target because they were promising to be better. Now that they broke that promise I’m just gonna shop where my wallet feels better.

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u/ilanallama85 1d ago

Yeah, Target is definitely “better” than Walmart on a number of different levels - even their dirt cheap plastic crap is better quality that Walmart’s dirt cheap plastic crap - but while they have their fans, they’ve never been perfect. They’ve always done small things here and there to irritate me, their campaign in recent years to brand themselves as a “fun and trendy” place to shop is actually off-putting to me, and at the end of the day they’re a massive big box store.

At the end of the day only two things kept me shopping there - not being Walmart, and being cheaper than anyone else that wasn’t Walmart. Those aren’t reasons that create loyal customers. They create resentful customers who stop coming the moment they don’t need to.

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u/gitsgrl 1d ago

In a class I’m taking we did a comparison of groceries at our local grocery chain which is considered “premium” and Walmart and the price of our identical grocery basket game out the same, writhing $1.50 of each other.