Future Of Grocery Tops Target’s Analyst Day

At Target’s 2016 Financial Community Meeting — also known as its Analyst Day — held yesterday (March 2) in New York and presented online, company executives covered a lot of bases — not the least of which was a focus on the grocery business.

According to Seeking Alpha — which shared a number of highlights from Target’s most recent annual meeting — the future of grocery was a hot topic of discussion among the retail chain’s executives. Despite the fact that competitors are currently outpacing Target in that category, the company remains dedicated to making it a key part of its offerings, and it is willing to invest a significant amount of time — years, as it happens — in order to make its grocery aisles a regular stop during shoppers’ trips to Target.

To that point, Seeking Alpha also shares that being able to adapt quickly to customer tastes in general is high on Target’s to-do list, something that the executives yesterday discussed could be achieved through testing and increased customer interaction. If there are elements of that goal where Target is already having some success, it’s in its online order/in-person pickup process, as well as its eCommerce offerings, two areas that the company stated during the meeting were generating customer engagement.

In a follow-up story to its original piece on Target’s Analyst Day, Seeking Alpha further noted that, starting in 2017, the retail chain plans to invest between $2 billion and $2.5 billion on an annual basis to continually upgrade its supply chain and technology infrastructure.

Additionally, according to the outlet, Target — again, beginning next year — is looking to increase its comparable sales by 3 percent or more annually, with the majority of that growth coming from its existing operations (both in-store and online). In the more immediate future (as in, this year), Target executives shared at yesterday’s meeting that the company plans to improve its digital sales performance, in part by reorganizing and cutting back some product offerings to make the selection process more simple for consumers.