Pursuits
Target Goes Big on Discounts This Holiday Season, Bringing Some Headaches
- Toy survey reflects aggressive effort to lower prices
- Target promotions on Cyber Monday lead to website delays
Cyber Monday Surge Causes Outages at Target, PayPal
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Target Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell has gotten more aggressive with holiday discounts during his second year of a turnaround effort, a strategy that is undercutting some rivals on price while also bringing headaches.
The company offered a 15 percent discount on almost all its products online Monday, a more widespread deal than in past years. It also lowered prices on many apparel and toy products by 30 percent, shifting away from the buy-one-get-one-discounted approach it used in 2014. The promotions were so popular that Target drew twice the traffic of its previous record-setting day, forcing the retailer to throttle back access to its website.