NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 24: People walk past the Target store on 42nd Street in Times Square on June 24, … More
Target is pulling the plug on its decade-old price match guarantee, originally touted as a cornerstone of its value promise. When introduced in 2013, then-CEO Gregg Steinhafel said it would give shoppers confidence that they could “shop at Target every day for the best value in retail.” Now, Target is effectively ending its best-value-in-retail promise and conceding a critical competitive edge to Amazon and Walmart.
Beginning July 28, Target will no longer match prices to identical products sold by Amazon or Walmart within a 14 day window after purchase. Going forward, it will only match prices for items sold in-store at Target or on Target.com, as if that isn’t something a customer should expect from any retailer.
In a statement to USA Today – the company did not respond to my request for comment – Target said, “We’ve found our guests overwhelmingly price match Target and not other retailers,” suggesting that the policy wasn’t too cumbersome on customer service staff or too costly to deliver.
Pricing Wars
The company touts that it is committed to “being priced right daily,” yet Profitero’s 2024 Price Wars study found Target’s prices are on average 13% higher than Amazon’s, the price war leader, and that Walmart averages just 5% over Amazon’s lowest price.
Full disclosure: price matching isn’t all that common in retail. “Generally speaking, it puts us in line with what the rest of the industry already does,” a Target spokesperson said. Indeed, Amazon and Walmart don’t have such policies, but then they don’t need to.
While customers rank price, product quality and convenience as the trifecta in determining where to shop, customer trust in a retailer to do right by them is not far behind and a key factor in building and sustaining customer loyalty. In making this price match policy change, Target has undermined hard-earned customer trust.
“Price matching has provided Target advantageous value perceptions with customers,” observed Charlie Skuba, Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
He added, “My interpretation is that Target’s data showed not enough competitive switching in regard to repeat habitual shopping visits vs. cherry-picking of particular items to justify the costs of competitive matching.”
Self-Inflicted Damage
The policy change couldn’t have come at a worse time. Target ended fiscal 2024 down nearly 1% to $106.6 billion from $107.4 billion in 2023. And it got off to a bad start in fiscal 2025. Revenues fell 2.8% in the first quarter after calls to boycott the company erupted following the announcement that it was rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
From February through June 2025, Target’s monthly foot traffic has been on a steady decline compared to the previous year, and it dropped another 6.3% during the week of July 7, according to Placer.ai.
Target has read the room and lowered previous year-end guidance from 1% revenue growth to a low-single-digit decline in fiscal 2025. Guidance for adjusted earnings were also pulled back to between $7 and $9 per share.
The latest news about changing the price match policy won’t have the far-reaching impact on the public’s perception of Target as the end of its DEI policies. Target’s share price has risen about 2% this week to trade just under $106 per share today since the price match news broke versus the 35% decline from a high of $142.50 at the end of January to $93 on May 21 after the first quarter earnings call.
Yet it is another hit to Target’s reputation as a retailer customers can trust to do the right thing when times are tough, as they are now.
Driving Customers Away
“Ending price matching isn’t the biggest of deals,” shared Neil Saunder, GlobalData’s managing director of retail. “But the way Target has communicated the change feels off – which is common these days. Target claims external price matching wasn’t widely used, so why end it?”
Noting that removing the price match guarantee puts more pressure on Target to deliver value and good prices – “Something it has struggled with more over recent years.” – Saunders concludes, “Without the safety net of price matching, Target has to work harder to prove its pricing is competitive and trustworthy.”
In the flip of a switch, Target has taken another step that erodes customer confidence and trust and pushes them even closer to key competitors, like Walmart and Amazon, who they can continue to count on to deliver more competitive prices.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2025/07/25/target-ends-price-match-policy-handing-amazon-walmart-the-pricing-advantage/