Target CEO Brian Cornell says shoppers are pulling back, even on groceries, as they feel stressed about their budgets.
In an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick that aired Thursday morning, he emphasized that the retailer has posted seven consecutive quarters of declining sales of discretionary items, such as apparel and toys, in terms of both dollars and units.
“But even in food and beverage categories, over the last few quarters, the units, the number of items they’re buying, has been declining,” he said in the interview.
I don’t think it was misleading, I think people didn’t read the whole comment. I said the trend reversed but we haven’t even caught back up to where we were in the 1970s. It’s going to take more than just one year of real wage growth to make up for stagnation and loss over decades. Wage growth is outpacing inflation for the moment, but this was just a recent change.