amadon: Experience Audit: Target PFresh Renovation

My Target now has a serious grocery offer.

It includes fresh produce and an expanded frozen and packaged goods assortment. This is part of the PFresh renovation project that Target has been undergoing, reconfiguring stores to capture more families’ food dollars and adjusting the floor plan to be more open and shoppable.

And by “MY” Target, I mean that. I don’t usually get this personal in my store assessments, but this is a special case. My family, friends and neighbors spend a good deal of time and money at this store. Like many Target customers, we have an emotional connection to this store and are glad its gotten a broader offer and reorganization.

We live in Grandview Heights, Ohio, a first-ring suburb of Columbus. This Target has been a godsend in this quasi-urban retail desert of the city’s core. Opened in 1996 on an old HVAC manufacturing site, this Target at Lennox Town Center serves as an anchor on a strip that includes an AMC Theater, Staples and Barnes & Noble.

Experience Shots

The main drive aisle terminates with the grocery offer. It doesn’t look all that different, but feels fresher and more open.

Departmental feature walls take lifestyle message to the ceilings, providing easy sight lines and navigational cues.

New walls vary in height and give you a sense of the whole space without it feeling overwhelming.

Gondola configuration has gotten creative. Feature areas and endcaps, varying heights stop the eye and invite you in. This could seem chaotic and messy, but the variety is a welcome change.

Fashion merchandising orients to the aisle and invites us in. Low inventory levels at this time of year make it a bit easier to provide all that negative space, but it is a nice touch. The use of photography in the large-format back wall display anchors each area within the department.

The perimeter walls of large format boxes are always a retail design challenge. The use of tonal color variations and pendant lamps are a clever touch that elevates the fashion departments just enough.

The addition of touch-screen digital technology is a nice addition. Appropriate in the gaming department, this display feels like it belongs at Target (in-store digital seldom is on-brand) delivers cross-platform/brand information and connects with you outside of store by offering to send you emails or texts about the products you were interested in during your experience. We have yet to see a just-right integration of digital/mobile merchandising within the store or an appropriate promotion of those digital assets in the store.

Seriously? I don’t need to give Target any more kudos for design—that’s a given—but English is one of my pet peeves. There are plenty of copywriters in the world that could have written a better question.

The new layout re-aligns departments nicely. The new department adjacencies flow well one to the next, aiding in the overall customer journey. My personal favorite is men’s fashion next to games next to electronics next to toys. Now that’s my kind of customer journey.