Target: Gauging What Customers Want

Like so many other retailers, Target is trying its best to engage with millennial customers by trying to figure out their wants and needs.

That’s part of working on beefing up the company’s U.S. business, which CEO Brian Cornell had promised to do early in 2015 when announcing that all Target Canada stores would be closing.

Now, the Minneapolis company is taking an alternate approach to focus groups and surveys, and even Cornell is getting in on the action.

“Target is going to great new lengths to understand its customers — to the point where corporate leaders are going into people’s homes, opening up closet doors and poking around cupboards,” the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

Asking customers for home visits isn’t traditional, but it is a reaction to changing consumer demographics and fierce competition for in-store and online shoppers.

“The focus has broadened to include consumers who are more urban-centric, and increasingly Hispanic,” according to the Star Tribune. “Target is competing mightily with Amazon.com and other retailers to grab the attention of young millennials as they strike out on their own and start careers and families.”

Target executives have visited customers in a variety of cities, and when Cornell is walking through their homes, “Most times, consumers have no idea they’ve got the undivided attention of the man in charge,” the Star Tribune says. He visits “hoping to understand such things as consumers’ food choices, fashion trends and shopping habits.”