The Innovative Way Target Now Delivers To Your Door
Target is amping up its delivery game. The retailer is leveraging delivery drivers to get online orders directly to your door.
Retailers nationwide are attempting to level up their delivery services. Since COVID and quarantine started, innovative ways to deliver contact-free products have become more available. Target is jumping on this trend by crafting better delivery hubs to get packages to people’s doors quicker.
Target has one massive delivery hub in Minneapolis, the birthplace of the retailers. There, drivers line up in drovers to collect packages to bring to customers around the city. Now, the company is unveiling three more sortation centers to make deliveries faster. The new Target centers will be located in the Chicagoland area and Denver. Opening delivery hubs is not a new strategy for retailers with massive e-commerce profitability. Other retailers like Walmart are opening similar sites to get online deliveries to people’s homes in quicker durations.
Pushed by the no-contact mandates during quarantine, Target opened five different hubs to get online orders to people’s homes without exposing themselves to COVID-19. As the pandemic wore on and many remained working from home, online purchasing and getting deliveries shipped to one’s doorstep became the premier way to shop. Retailers followed this trend by constructing new sortation sites to accommodate the increasing amount of online orders. At these Target facilities, ready-to-go orders are adequately sorted by route so that drivers can make faster, efficient deliveries. The three upcoming hubs are set to open in January 2023.
John Mulligan, CEO of Target, stated that the construction plans have everything to do with the current economic and social climates. He wants Target to meet the “guest where they are,” which means providing more efficient delivery services like other giant retailers like its rivals Amazon and Walmart. Even before the pandemic, e-commerce megastores like Amazon increased customer transactions due to one-day delivery services. This quickness was unlike other competitors, swiftly pushing Amazon to the top of online retailers nationwide. Now, other retailers with e-commerce sites are attempting to contend with Amazon’s lightning-fast delivery services.
Target’s focus on e-commerce has plenty to do with its accelerating online traffic. 20% of Target’s sales are currently from online ordering, with more than 50% as same-day services like curbside pickup. Unfortunately, providing delivery is more expensive for retailers than shoppers purchasing items in-store. This has led Target to develop a more budget-friendly solution to the increasing trend of online shopping. Constructing delivery hubs while providing more efficient routes for its drivers could save the retailer money as online shopping skyrockets.
Target’s creation of new sortation centers will come in handy as many retailers are experiencing overstock issues. Before online shopping picked up in 2020, Target stores’ backrooms were primarily used for processing and packaging online orders. But as more customers turned to websites to make their transactions, backrooms quickly piled up with boxes and packages ready for shipment. Sortation sites allow for more efficient shipping and remove endless overstock and packaging from brick-and-mortar stores.
Target is one of the most ubiquitous retailers in America. By keeping up with the e-commerce trend and constructing new delivery hubs, the corporation can provide quicker shipments for its loyal customer base.
