Target is a much smaller retailer than Walmart, with fewer stores and much less of a price focus. Walmart’s massive footprint and owned truck fleet accrue advantages to its brick-and-mortar and omnichannel operations, and its massive size also gives it huge leverage with vendors.
That all helps Walmart beat Target with what Cowen flags as “customer value perception,” but Target is holding its own, according to the report. “We do like [Target]’s recent intensity” when it comes to price competition, Cowen analysts wrote. “[Walmart] has been investing billions in price for over 1.5 years. Meanwhile, [Target] remains in the early innings, having begun investing in price earlier this year, and in our view began making a significant push to improve customer value perception in early September with a widely circulated blog post.”
