Despite the generally positive buzz around Target, the giant America retailer has taken a big stumble in Canada.

I was really surprised when I read this blog discussing how badly Target is doing in Canada. As a consumer, I was quite eager to check out the new stores. I also distinctly remember seeing Target ads on the side of a Canada Line skytrain car. It seemed like Target thoroughly did their homework before they invested in Canada.

However, not only were there product shortages at launch, but their poorly designed website was heavily criticized.

Nonetheless, the key problem was pricing – Target couldn’t match the prices that they had in their stores in the US. Thus, the Canadian stores could be perceived as a worse “spinoff” compared to the American version. I wonder how this will affect the brand perception of Target Canada? And how long does bad press and publicity last for?

It’s questionable that even though Target knew (or should have known) about important environmental factors (such as: many Canadian cities are close to the States) that they still couldn’t fill the knowledge gap between them and the customers. Customer want cheap prices and Target brand goods that they expected from US stores and Target couldn’t achieve either of them. Frankly, it’s embarrassing for the 2^nd largest America discount retailer to make critical mistakes in expanding markets.