Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) may become remembered by the equal rights movement of the future for pioneering work, or for getting the wrath for its well-intentioned pledges this year and change to customer policy.
The US retailer announced this week that it will spend $20mln to add a private restroom to each of its stores by next year, following customer protests over its policy allowing transgender individuals to use whichever bathroom corresponds with their gender identity.
In some ways the actual declaration from Target is small beer. The vast majority of Target’s 1800 locations have single-occupancy or unisex restrooms, but it will add the option to nearly 300 stores by November and to about 20 remaining stores by March 2017, the company said on Wednesday.
But what is significant is that Target’s declarations earlier in the year have in a sense built up customer expectations – in a different direction to what’s been announced this week. And that is starting to court controversy and protests.
Target says the initiative announced on Wednesday was in response to feedback from customers voicing displeasure over the company's bathroom policy.
Protests started at Target stores after the retailer said in April that it welcomed transgender employees and guests to use the restroom or fitting room that corresponded with their gender identity.
But the protests don’t simply follow on from being a pioneering firm which made its pledge four months ago.
It also comes from customers unhappy that the company may have reneged on another pledge it made – diametrically opposite what it now proposed to do.
Target’s CEO Brian Cornell had promised to roll out family restrooms earlier this year and now defends the company's stance on diversity.
Although the message may have become confused, what Target is actually doing is making its established restrooms into “family” bathrooms while telling transgender customers they may prefer to use a separate single closet.
But this raises the question whether transgender restrooms are necessary across much of the United States?
Even the National Center for Transgender Equality, which applauded Target's decision, admitted that “some” of the members it represents might prefer the option of the single closet, but that “most transgender people will continue to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity as they have been doing for decades."
So on that basis, it might be argued that Target has unwittingly introduced a form of segregation, making transgender people out to be different to the rest of the population rather the accommodating them.
Apart from Moral Majority supporters unhappy with the whole episode, this might not even be welcomed by the majority of the transgender community. For one thing, many of their community decided to change their gender identity because they felt they were the opposite sex to the one they were born. They don’t necessarily feel they are transgender – as that makes them sound like a cross-over or undecided.
If they were born as women and now identify with being men and having male names, then they will identify with visiting either the men’s toilets or a unisex closet.
What appears to have prompted the decision by Target was a ruling by North Carolina which makes the state one of the first to enact legislation requiring transgender people to use the public bathroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate – not their current identity.
But Target is now rolling out its policy nationwide, igniting a non-issue for many parts of the USA.
While some will welcome the move by Target, one group, the American Family Association, says more than 1.3 million people have signed an online petition to boycott Target stores to protest the issue. The petition said Target's policy was "a danger to wives and daughters" and called on Target to offer single-occupancy bathrooms.
And is it all good for business?
Well, Target claims the customer discontent hadn't had a material impact on sales.
That could prove a difficult claim to support or quantify, especially since Target on Wednesday reported its first decline in same-store sales in two years and warned that sales could fall in each of the next two quarters, as it struggles with lower shopper traffic to its stores.
Target shares closed down 0.5% at $70.30 on Thursday.