Target said today that it is ending a holiday tradition that used to involve showing up to the store on Thanksgiving.
The store will not open on Thanksgiving Day this year, and will remain closed for the foreseeable future. Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, said in a note to employees that the temporary measure would become a permanent one.
Cornell said in the note that Thanksgiving store hours are one thing we won't get back to when the swine flu is over. Target distribution and call centers will be open on the holiday.
Target used to be a major destination for Black Friday shoppers.
Target was part of a group of retailers that began opening their stores on Thanksgiving in order to compete for sales. It wasn't unusual to see shoppers camped out on the sidewalks outside of Target, Best Buy, and Toys R Us in the hopes of getting the best deals on the newest video game consoles or flat-screen TVs.
Many companies saw backlash to their Black Friday efforts. In order to save Thanksgiving, an employee at a Target store in Omaha, Nebraska started a Change.org petition in 2011. By the next year, some Target locations were opening at 9pm on Thanksgiving evening.
Major retailers were moving away from Thanksgiving Day openings as online shopping became more popular and foot traffic at physical stores decreased during the holiday weekend. Last year, due to the coronaviruses outbreak, Walmart and Best Buy closed their stores on the holiday. Target is the first major retailer to announce it will permanently shift to Thanksgiving Day closings, but others, like Walmart, will also stay closed on the holiday this year.
Thanksgiving Day shopping has become a trend of the past.
The tradition of flooding stores in search of the best holiday deals may be coming to an end because of retail's shift to e-commerce. The second-best online shopping day ever tracked by the firm was last year, when online spending rose by 22%. On Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day, foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores decreased significantly, as shown by the data from Sensormatic Solutions. Sensormatic had tracked a year-over-year decline in foot traffic on these two days as far back as 2013.
Thanksgiving may be the least opportune time for retailers to reach shoppers. A recent survey by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics found that 30.6 million Americans plan to shop in-store or online on Thanksgiving Day, but more will shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
