Target Plans For A Competitive Holiday Season

Every retailer is sharpening its pencil to be competitive for the coming holiday season. Target management recently expressed confidence that recent initiatives will pay off, making it a winning year for the company. Putting missteps in grocery behind them, management expressed confidence that food will be a customer draw in the second half of the year. Stores will be fully in stock unlike last year when there were many outages. Out-of-stock has been a malaise for Target for many years. The reason: the computer system that controlled the in-stock-position often short changed some stores of merchandise.  The good news is out-of-stocks have been reduced by 25% both in stores and on-line. One of the improvement for this holiday season is that stores can now ship merchandise directly to their customers (guests). About 1060 of 1800 stores will be able to offer this service.  This will should insure quicker delivery to customers. At the same time, Target is adding more staff to its in-store pick-up capabilities insuring quicker customer pick-up as well. Read more at Forbes.