The order reportedly came down on November 1st. Target employees around the country were given very specific instructions about what they were supposed to do. Which involved pulling down in-store signage that promoted most Disney products.
Mind you, this order didn’t just go out to a handful of Target stores in one particular region of the country. We’re talking about all 1,494 stores in the chain. And these instructions were incredibly specific. With employees being told to:
- Remove all Backwall Priority & Pop-off displays that promoted the November 7th release of “Cars” on DVD. Then replacing all of this signage with older signs that promoted DreamWorks Animation’s “Over the Hedge” (Which was released on DVD back on October 17th).
- Remove all similiar in-store signage that promoted the December 5th release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” on DVD. Then replacing that material with older signs that promoted 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men -The Last Stand” (Which was released on DVD back on October 3rd).
Similiar Disney-related signage was then pulled down in the toy & clothing aisles at all Targets nationwide. Anything that would have deliberately directed shoppers’ attention to “Disney Fairies,” “Disney Princess” & “The Little Mermaid” -related items were ordered removed. These signs were then replaced with more generic signage that hyped Target slogans like “Expect More. Pay Less.”
Mind you, the actual merchandise still stayed on the shelves. It was only the Disney-specific signage that got pulled down in all of these Target stores around the country.
Why For? Because Target management wanted to send a message back to the folks in Burbank.
And what was that message? Mainly that Target execs have grown tired on the Walt Disney Company’s deliberate efforts to under-cut this retail chain’s in-store sales of new Disney DVDs by making these very same titles available for downloading at much lower prices on iTunes.
In Disney’s defense, these lower-priced downloads (Which typically cost between $9.99 – $12.99. Which is a significantly lower price point than most films are wholesaled to even the biggest Big Box chains) are only available for the week that these new titles are first put on sale. Once that week is over, then the cost of these downloads shoots back up into the $14.99 – $19.99 price range.
But the way Target sees it, the Walt Disney Company is deliberately corrupting this retail chain’s customer base. That — by making these new titles available for downloading at much lower prices — the Mouse is trying to ween the next generation of consumers off of its DVD-buying habit. Get those teens & young adults with their iPods used to the idea that downloading is really the more cost-effective way to go here.
Of course, from Disney’s point of view, the real beauty of getting people to download the studio’s newest releases is that — someday — the Mouse will no longer has to pay for the actual manufacture of new DVDs. Which means that that much more money will go straight into Mickey’s pocket.
But on the retail side of the fence, these folks don’t much care for downloading at all. Once the kids purchase their iPods, the Big Boxes are effectively cut out of the equation. Stores like Target will no longer serve as the main distribution points for new content (I.E. music & movies). Consumers can now go straight to the source at any time of the day or night and download exactly what they want. And the best part of being a digitally-savvy shopper is that there’s no such thing as a CD ever being sold out and/or a DVD of a new film ever being out of stock.
Mind you, the Mouse knows that it’s got to tread very lightly as it moves along the path to this particular future. Given that 40% of the DVDs that the public purchases today are still sold at Wal-Mart … Well, Disney knows that it has to work hard at keeping the Big Boxes happy.
So one wonders what the Mouse is going to do now in order to placate Target. So that this retail chain will then tell its employees to put all of those Disney-related promotional signs back up in its 1,494 stores. Otherwise, this particular corporate protest may have a really significant impact on the amount of Disney merchandise that gets moved at Target over the coming holiday shopping season.
But what do you folks think? Will Target’s protest actually hit the target and get Disney to back off a bit on all of its iTunes download promotions? Or is this Big Box in for a big surprise further on down the line?
Your thoughts?