Seth Ketron, associate professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, spoke with KARE 11 about Target’s latest earnings report, which showed another quarter of declining sales. Ketron explained recent economic uncertainty and persistent high prices are prompting many consumers to save rather than spend.
From the article:
University of St. Thomas Associate Professor of Marketing Seth Ketron said he isn’t surprised by the latest numbers.
“People are being pressured with increasing costs and prices of things like groceries aren’t coming down, the job market is kind of up in the air. People are looking for jobs and it can take sometimes months, over a year. There’s just so much uncertainty and people generally when there’s uncertainty in the market or uncertainty in their own personal lives they feel more comfortable saving rather than spending," Ketron said.
He said consumers are now more than ever buying in accordance to belief alignment.
"It’s a key point of positioning for a lot of brands when there’s thousands of retailers out there. They all see basically the same stuff. How do you make yourself different?” he said. “It’s interesting to see nothing related to what they’re going to do around DEI going forward since I know that’s a very sensitive point for them and that might be just because they don’t want to go there.”
