Hint – it has to do with the products
This blog post is a Market Research assignment for my
Advertising class
On February 3
rd
, around 10AM, my advertising
class converged on the Target stores in Winnipeg. A few of us went to the Grant
Park location, which is newly renovated in place of the old Zellers building
attached to the mall. We observed shoppers, the employees, and products to
determine what the target market is for Target Canada at that specific time
of day.
A group of us walked in around 9:50 and there were not too
many customers in the store. I saw three customers total in the first 15
minutes of being in the store. They were younger and didn’t seem to be buying
anything particular, just killing time. They are probably Target's intended market.
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| Photo credit: Kenton Larsen |
Just before 10:30 more and more customers began to arrive to
shop. Most were retirees, with about 60% of them being women. The products they
seemed to buy were a variation of food and clothes. Some had small appliances
but there didn’t seem to be a consensus on what they were all purchasing. I
personally didn’t see anyone purchase more than ten items at one time. If there
was an express checkout they were all under the item limit.
The secondary market during that time was young mothers,
with their small children. The children were mostly sitting in the shopping
cart while the mothers bought an array of items as well.
The employees seemed to have a consensus of Target Canada is
doing okay sales wise but right now they are very slow due to it still being so
close to Christmas. They expect to pick up in the next few months.
Expectations were high for Target Canada, and even the
employees seem to be annoyed by the questions of “how come you don’t have
(insert item only available in the USA)?” This is the biggest draw for
Canadians to come to Target, yet Target does not actually have those items. Without
those items Target is just another Zellers, Walmart, or Superstore
.
If Target doesn’t get in those
products the target market they currently have (and their intended market) won’t be changing their pattern of shopping
at those stores over Target.
I do hope Target gets in some of the US products but until
then I will continue buying BBQ sauce, beef jerky, and Trix in Grand Forks on
my regular trip down there.
3 comments:
I liked Zellers better because it had a great in-store restaurant with decent prices and good menu options. Target just has Starbucks Coffee. I will say, though, that Target has the best powdered mini donuts, and that's the only reason I'll keep coming back.
Zach's comment is the second one praising Zellers that I've read today. Who would've thunk it?
I mostly liked Zellers for nostalgic reasons. The store always had this early 90s vibe that brought back memories of those commercials with the Zeddy bear ("the lowest price is the law!"). But that restaurant was pretty awesome all around.
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