DALLAS, Jan 29, 2008 / FW/ — For the retailer that made high-street fashion affordable by collaborating with high street fashion designers like Luella and Proenza Schouler, their ‘chicness’ stops there. It seems that the cheap-chic retailer deems CUSTOMER SERVICE unfashionable.
In an article by the New York Times, “Target Tells a Blogger to Go Away”, wherein the retailer told one of its customers Amy Jussel, who just happen to be the founder of ShapingYouth.org, a blog about the impact of marketing on children that ‘Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,’ when Ms. Jussel complained about the retailer’s advertising campaign.
The ad in question depicts a woman splayed across a big target pattern — the retailer’s emblem — with the bull’s-eye at her crotch.
And though ‘blogging’ is not really the issue here, but a customer’s complaint, the reaction of Target’s Public Relations department ‘TARGETING’ (pun intended) the blog and the blogger, obviously, the blogosphere did not like this one bit.
Personally, as a customer and an informed consumer, I do not appreciate the PR Department’s response to Amy Jussel either. In the retail sector, Customer Service is a very important aspect.
At Target, when customers come in, they are told they are GUESTS. With this faux pas by the retailer’s PR Department, the company’s efforts to make customers think that Target is a friendly place to shop has come to naught.
And, the irony of it all… though Target told the blogosphere that it is irrelevant, the company’s careless treatment of customer complaint just made the millions of bloggers unite, thus creating a force that they have to contend with.
To borrow from an old saying, the blogosphere is a sleeping giant and Target rudely woke it up!
[MARI DAVIS]
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