Description
Target Corporation is an American retail corporation. It is the 8th-largest retailer in the United States, and is a component of the S&P 500 Index. It is unrelated to Target Australia. Target established itself as the day time 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 company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. 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 massive and highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Target Canada subsidiary in the early 2010s but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States. As of February 2nd, 2019, Target operates 1,844 stores throughout the United States. The company is ranked No. 39 on the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Their retail formats include the discount store Target, the hypermarket SuperTarget, and "small-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".
