Target Television Commercial from 2009.
Target Corporation is the second-largest discount retailer in the
United States, behind
Walmart, and is a component of the
S&P; 500 Index. Founded by
George Dayton and headquartered in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company was originally named
Goodfellow Dry
Goods in June 1902 before being renamed the
Dayton's Dry Goods
Company in 1903 and later the Dayton Company in 1910. The first
Target store opened in
Roseville, Minnesota in 1962, while the parent company was renamed the Dayton
Corporation in
1967. It became the
Dayton-Hudson Corporation after merging with the
J.L. Hudson Company in
1969, and held ownership of several department store chains including Dayton's,
Hudson's,
Marshall Field's, and Mervyn's. Wesfarmers began operating an
Australian version of Target in
1973, although aside from naming rights, the
American and
Australian companies are unaffiliated.
Target established itself as the highest-earning division of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation in the
1970s; it began expanding the store nationwide in the
1980s and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the
1990s. The parent company was renamed the Target Corporation in
2000 and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a highly publicized security breach of customer data and the failure of its short-lived
Canadian subsidiary in the early 2010s but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States.
As of FY
2015, Target operates 1,792 locations throughout the United States. Their retail formats include the discount store Target, the hypermarket SuperTarget, and "flexible format" stores previously named CityTarget and TargetExpress before being consolidated under the Target branding. Target is often recognized for its emphasis on "the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers," whereas its rival Walmart more heavily relies on its strategy of "always low prices."[
- published: 01 Jul 2016
- views: 1