The impact of Target Corp.’s weekend register glitch won’t show up until the retailer discloses quarterly revenue in August, but it could have cost the company about $50 million in lost sales, according to one analyst.
Abandoned Carts
Saturday’s outage came on the eve of Father’s Day in the U.S., when the retailer was promoting various items—from ties to golf balls—as last-minute gift ideas for dads. Customers took to Twitter, sharing images of the long lines and the abandoned shopping carts. The hashtag #targetdown quickly became a trending topic on the social media platform.
The snafus didn’t compromise any customer information, but rekindled memories of Target’s costly 2013 data breach that exposed the payment card data of millions of customers. The mishaps could also impact the healthy flow of customers Target has enjoyed of late: Customer traffic, a key metric for any retailer, has risen by more than 3 percent for six straight quarters.
Target is also facing a difficult comparison with the previous year’s second quarter, when same-store sales rose 6.5 percent, its best performance in 13 years.
Reporting by Matthew Boyle.