Target's November results are impressive, far outperforming Amazon and Walmart

Target was an early winner of the U.S. holiday shopping season , with the Minnesota- based retailer seeing sales increase by about 10% in November , according to Bloomberg data .

Target's increase was twice that of its top competitors Walmart and Amazon , but with the arrival of COVID -19 O micron variants , we won't know what will happen in December .

In fact, before the holiday shopping season , Target was considered one of the winners of the epidemic . Its stock price has doubled since the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020. Because Target is positioned as a retailer of daily necessities, it was able to stay open when the epidemic hit the United States .

At the same time , Target's booming business has been further fueled by its renovation of offline stores and investment in its e-commerce business, including self-service pickup for online orders .

According to data from analytics firm Placer.ai, customer traffic to stores across the U.S. this year is just 0.8% below 2019 levels. Despite the ongoing pandemic , overall U.S. store visits increased by 5.7% and 0.1% in October and November, respectively, compared to two years ago.

Target’s sales grew about 17% in the 12 months through October , and visits to Target stores between Nov. 1 and Dec. 6 were up about 12% compared with a year ago, according to Placer.ai , roughly in line with Walmart ’s growth and twice as fast as Costco ’s .

This is good news for department stores, an industry once considered unimportant and forced to close stores at the height of the pandemic, as consumers return to physical stores for Christmas .

Nordstrom is leading with 63% traffic growth, followed by Macy's at 49% and JC Penney and Dillard's at 42 % , according to Placer.ai data .

In addition to Target, other discount chains are also recovering . HomeGoods saw 15 % more traffic this holiday season than two years ago , while TJ Maxx, which shares the same parent company as HomeGoods, saw a 9% increase and Burlington saw an 8% increase.

In addition , Ulta Beauty also demonstrated the recovery of the beauty industry , with its visits increasing by 26% compared to a year ago.

U.S. retail sales have surged this year , thanks in part to billions of dollars in federal government subsidies to stimulate consumption , but also to Americans spending on travel and services.

And those gains have been largely won by large chains, as many small businesses have closed during the pandemic . More than 440,000 small businesses in the U.S. retail and hospitality sectors have failed to survive the pandemic , according to researcher Greg Buzek.

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