Brand Integrity is a Tricky Thing...

Wal-Mart has an image problem.  Their products are known as being cheap, and their executives are known to milk the little guy producer out of every last penny of profit in order to lower their purchase price, so Wal-Mart in turn can charge lower prices to customers and increase their market share.  They are known to short-change their underpaid workers out of decent health insurance, and are frequently accused of gender bias.  Wal-Mart has an image problem.

At the same point, Target is known as having higher brand standards - they are more picky with who they hire, they pay a bit better, they offer higher quality merchandise.  You don't hear Target's name in the headlines a lot associated with anything more than their weekly ads and what new high end designer they've managed to bring to their discount merchandising model.

This fall, Target led the pack of Black Friday retailers by announcing they were opening at midnight instead of the more traditional early morning (4 or 5am) opening - meaning their employees had to start their shifts - many of which are 8 hours long - at 11pm on Thanksgiving.  This resulted in a should-have-been-expected backlash from both employees and customers, who felt like the retail giant was crossing a line and not truly giving their employees the unpaid holiday as was tradition.

I'm sure Target made an assload of money on Thursday night/Friday morning.  And I'm sure they made more money opening at midnight than they would have at 4am, because as a result of their opening, everyone else did, too.  But there is a part of me that wonders what the dollar value of the damage to their brand integrity has been.  Target is now associated with something than has been rare in their brand history - accusations of employee mistreatment (yes, I'm sure thousands of individual examples can be found, as with any national company).  Do I still shop at Target?  Yes, I do, the MTB and I dropped 200$ there yesterday.  But I'd be a little less likely to drive by the Wal-Mart were it closer than I would have been before this incident happened. That's the problem with having excellent brand integrity - the company actually has to have the excellent integrity to back it up if they want to keep it.  In this case, Target did not.