Target Just Announced Something Brilliant That Amazon Can’t Compete With

Over the next few months, Target is rolling out a feature designed to make one of the worst parts of shopping a little easier. Now, you’ll be able to return products to a store without having to leave your car.

Think about it — one of the worst things about shopping is that sometimes you have to return whatever you bought. Sometimes it’s the wrong size. Sometimes it’s broken. Sometimes you just change your mind. The problem is, you’re busy, and returning things is not nearly as fun as buying them in the first place.

Obviously, if you’re a business owner and you care about the experience you provide for your customers, you would want to make every step of the process as easy as possible. It comes down to a simple three-word rule that applies to every company: make it easy. We’ll get back to that in a minute, but first, let’s look at what Target is doing and why it’s so smart.

Target has figured out how to leverage its best asset — its physical retail stores — to better serve its customers, and to better compete against Amazon. That’s a big deal, especially when you think about those three words.

Amazon became the world’s largest online retailer by taking solving the worst problem with buying things online — that you often had to pay extra to have something shipped to your house. Often, that also meant waiting days or even weeks for your purchase to arrive. Amazon eliminated the cost of shipping, and over time has reduced the amount of time you spend waiting.

Today, you can often buy something on Amazon.com and have it delivered for free in a day or two. In some cases, Amazon will leave it on your porch the same day. That takes away a lot of the friction of shopping online, which means that people are willing to order things from Amazon that they would have previously bought in a physical store. It’s easy, relatively quick, and hassle-free.

Target, on the other hand, has always been primarily a place you go to for the experience of walking through a store, putting things in a real shopping cart, waiting in line at a register, and paying for a bag of new stuff you can’t wait to get home and use or try on. You could certainly order things on Target’s website, but if you’re someone who likes to shop at Target, that probably means you like visiting the stores. Those stores are something Amazon can’t compete with.

Sure, technically there are Amazon stores, but it’s not the same. Target has more than 1,800 physical stores and the company has been intentional about using them to better improve the customer experience. That’s true even when you don’t want to go inside.

During Covid, when almost everything we bought was ordered online, Target got creative about how to use its network of stores to better serve its customers — especially those who didn’t necessarily have time to wander through a store. You could place an order on Target’s website and then pick it up in the store, or drive up and have someone bring it out to your car. You could even have it delivered the same day using Shipt. Target’s stores became little distribution centers that made it easier for people to get their orders quickly.

“Our journey to expand our fulfillment options starts with making it easier for our guests to shop with us,” says Mark Schindele, Target’s executive vice president and chief stores officer. “That’s why we’re launching Drive Up Returns. Allowing our guests to process a return from the comfort of their car underscores our commitment to helping our guests shop — and return — however they choose.”

Really, Drive Up Returns is just the next logical move and it’s a huge step up in convenience. Now, not only can you place an order and have it brought out to your car, but if you have to return something, you can simply drive up and someone will come out and get it. No more having to find time to go into a store and wait in line to return something. You can simply pull into a designated spot and someone will come to get it.

I’m a huge fan of the idea that every company should make it easy to do business with them. If you’re a retailer, it should be easy for customers to find what they want, easy to check out, and even easy to return whatever they bought when they need to.