Joseph Rueter

Broken: my Target experience

So, in my house I now refer to Target as the war zone. In all reality however, I have an affection for Target but dang it can be hard to go there. If I have five things on my list when I go there I have 5 wars to fight with Target. What am I talking about? Well, a war is often comprised of many battles. When I go to Target I have many battles associated with each item on my list, therefore I have many wars to fight. It’s a war zone.

Now, mind you, I am using a lower case “w” so I am not to crazy about this but my intuition says that there are at lease some, even if minimal, similarities between going to Target and a war. I think they include intention, expectation, conflict of interest, confusion, frustration and so on.

One, The parking lot…its a battle… oh my. Packed… tons of people backing out while pedestrians walk behind them… isn’t there a better way? I saw a possible solution at the Walker Art Center awhile back in their exhibition on urban design. It had to do with using ovals when designing big box developments. I want to see and experience that built!

Two, Finding anything… its a battle. I went in looking for saran wrap, deodorant, a soap scrubber thing for the kitchen sink, wood floor solution for my swiffer, nail clipper and gummies because I knew before I went that I wanted to reward my self for a job well done. Isn’t it funny that all this stuff is to make life easier? Isn’t in funny that I incentivize myself to go to Target?

Three, to their credit, everyone in “red” was ready… even eager to help. They don’t hesitate to ask if you need help finding something. The thing of it is that they rattle off some isle letter and number and point. Am I to know where to go from that? Seriously, please walk me there.

Four, once you have four battles fought the fifth most often arrives. So you’re at the Deodorant isle and you’re in front of what you want but all you can see is what’s on sale. Admittedly I was looking for something quite interesting… the Secret brand Invisible solid Unscented version. So, I was already looking for basically nothing but Target knows this. They know that deodorant comes in one gillian options yet apparently all they care about is that you know which of them is on sale. I wonder if they could help us all out and sort and label and color code them by gel or stick, smell or no smell, visible or invisible. That would help me anyway.

Solutions… first, I thought they needed to change the store layout… then I thought of all kinds of reasons they don’t want to do that (money and incidental buying are just two).

Then, I thought they need to put items like my soap scrubber brush next to… oh, I don’t know, the dish soap as well as where they are currently (behind the decorative storage isle in E3)!

Then I thought that my iPhone could help me with this… maybe they could build an app that you could use with your phone that when you type what you’re looking for it would give you a map of the store of where it is on a map and make suggestions about other things I might want (amazon.com style).

But then I thought… they have people there that know where stuff is, I want a personal Target shopper aid. They could be paid to do just that. Heck I would pay them. Who would not pay Target a cool 5 spot, say, to have someone help you around the store to find things? Heck, I would pay with credit card twice for that… once for the shopping on a handheld that the aid would carry and again for my stuff. The aids could then make a commish on everyone they help. Perfect, then I would get what I want on my list and cut my 45 min experience for 5 items down to 10 minutes! The aids could also be trained in making suggestions and building relationships with people and make more on metrics.

I don’t see the big box getting smaller or going away any time soon. Can we make it like my local hardware shop? I can’t go in there without being personally escorted around, believe me, I’ve tried!

What bothers you about Target? How might you suggest building a preferable future experience there?