Target foot traffic down for 11th straight week after caving on DEI
Target suffered its 11th week of foot-traffic declines, a slump that began the week after the retailer announced it was rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program in January.
For the week that began April 7, foot traffic at Target stores dropped 4.7% YoY, according to Placer.ai. Costco, which unlike Target defied calls from the Trump administration for private companies to abandon their DEI efforts, notched its 16th straight week of foot traffic increases.
Target, which in recent years had championed racial justice and social justice, has seen an outsized amount of backlash after scrapping DEI, being pilloried on its social media feeds and the subject of a 40-plus day boycott spearheaded by Black clergy that ended on Easter. Indeed, for that same second week in April, fellow DEI capitulators Walmart and McDonald's both saw foot-traffic increases, up 2.7% and 4.5% respectively.
Also just in is traffic data for the full month of February, with Target down 6.5% YoY for the month and Costco—beginning to see a pattern here?