Target hits mark with service
After months of anticipation, was U.S. retailer Target on target when it opened the doors to its first three stores in Calgary?
That depends on whom you talked to Tuesday.
There were lineups at the Market Mall store in the morning and the wait to try on clothing at the Chinook Centre location was 20 minutes long.
Clearly the curiosity factor was high for shoppers who have visited the company’s stores in the United States and those who simply wanted to see what the hype was about. The reviews were mixed. It’s probably safe to say that there was a demarcation line between people who had previous experiences with the U.S. retailer and those whose first Target experience occurred Tuesday.
The experienced shoppers were pleased with what they saw on the shelves and on the racks, though some food products such as the Archer Farm potato chips and Orbit gum were nowhere to be found. For those shoppers who had never before set foot in a Target store, it seemed more of a non-event.
One young mother pushing a stroller at the Chinook store said she didn’t see what the big deal was about. The store, she said, looked a lot like Zellers and the prices of the merchandise were not much different than what she said could be found on offer at Wal-Mart.
“I expected ‘funner’ compared with what I could find here before,” she said.
A young man, who said he lived close by, said he wasn’t overwhelmed either by the products on the shelves of the grocery section or the prices.
“Honestly, I am not that impressed. We used to have a Zellers here before and it was dated and had mediocre products … but if that Zellers had bothered to invest to add in more modern stock it would be Target-like.”
Reller said more details about Blue will be released before Microsoft holds a developers conference in San Francisco in late June. Some of Blue’s features are expected to be previewed at that conference.
“I view this as a relaunch of Windows 8, finally giving everyone a fully baked version, ”said technology analyst Patrick Moorhead. “It has been a very rough road for Microsoft so far.”
If Blue is meant to make people more comfortable, the changes may incorporate more of the elements from earlier versions of Windows.
A common complaint has centred on the lack of a “start” button in the Windows 8 menu.
Other critics have pined for an option that would allow the system to begin in a desktop mode suited for running applications designed for earlier versions of the operating system. Windows 8 currently starts off showing a mosaic of interactive tiles tailored for swiping through programs with a finger instead of using a computer mouse.
Blue also might make it easier to find a set of controls — known as “charms” in Windows 8’s parlance — that currently must be pulled out from the right side of a display screen.
Besides responding to customer feedback, Blue also will improve Windows 8’s ability to work on smaller tablets with seven- and eight-inch display screens, Reller said. She declined to say whether Microsoft intends to make smaller version of its own Surface tablets. In a conference call with analysts last month, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said the company was working with other manufacturers to make smaller tablets.
Moorhead also believes Blue will bring more built-in programs, such as a video editor and audio recorder, to Windows 8 and may also include other improvements.
One thing that Blue won’t fix: the relatively small selection of mobile applications tailored for Windows 8. Reller said the Windows 8 store now has more than 60,000 apps. By contrast, there are more than 800,000 apps available for Apple’s mobile’s devices and nearly that many for Android devices, too. In one of the most glaring omissions on Windows 8, Facebook Inc. still hasn’t designed an app to make its online social network more accessible on that system. Facebook has about 750 million mobile users.
Microsoft’s decision to tweak Windows 8 so soon after it went on sale may reinforce perceptions that the product is a flop.