In contrast to the frequent press articles that Target’s foot traffic and sales were down mid-to-high single-digits due to consumer backlash over Target’s DEI policy changes, comp-transactions / traffic was down only -2.4%. Comp-sales for the stores were down -5.7%, which was partially offset by a +4.7% in digital sales (which is mainly store-delivery and curbside). As shown in the table below, February was the softest month per Advan traffic, and the period’s reported traffic* was largely in line with the Advan estimate.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Traffic trends going into Easter Sunday 2025 demonstrated that households planned to celebrate the holiday this year and that the “outside environment” didn’t diminish their enthusiasm and preparations. (Generally, holidays are largely immune from anxieties about the economy; it’s the shoulder periods between seasons that suffer.) As it relates to foot traffic, interpreting this year’s trend is complicated by the late timing of Easter vs.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Over the weekend, again numerous press and blog reports declared Target’s store traffic to be down due to boycotts and upset feelings over Target’s messaging around DEI. However, those reports cite a traffic decline YoY against a week last year that included an extra day (Leap Day). We adjust for that by using 7-day and 91-day rolling periods and Advan’s data shows no unusual trend for Target vs.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Ulta Beauty reported a comp-sales increase for Q4 of +1.5%, driven by a +3.0% increase in average ticket and a -1.4% decrease in comp-transactions. Removing the lift from ecommerce sales, store comp-sales increased modestly, suggesting a slight decline in store comp-transactions. Advan estimates that store comp-traffic increased +0.3%; if true, that would imply a modest decrease in the store conversion rate; that’s not unexpected given a more cautious consumer environment and substantial competitive encroachment on the retailer from Amazon and Sephora.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Last week’s analysis included management’s comments relative to any DEI backlash that they were seeing no impact to their business. However, over the weekend, media outlets wrote about a negative impact on Target store traffic and business from the backlash. Well, third-party data being third party (i.e. an estimate vs. ground truth first-party data) requires understanding the scope of the aggregation and its limitations.

As expected, Target reported improved results QoQ and issued seemly conservative guidance for 2025. We write “seemly” because of all the consumer and business unease being stirred by the hurricane in Washington. That unease is leading to lower macro activity, which for retail means a lower volume month, resulting in bigger percentage-changes given a smaller denominator. A very wintery February is also a factor. We wrote about all of this in our Walmart story two weeks ago and the environment appears little changed since then – i.