So Target is now competing with antique malls? Maybe they can underprice them and put them out of business, and then decide not to sell that stuff anymore.

So it IS all Target's fault.

This thread is so infuriating.

What a bunch of "Old man yells at cloud" mixed with confirmation bias and a dash of "Well, it just goes to show ya."

Oh, please.

Boo on the (now accurate) thread title change.

Boo on this thread even existing in the first place.

Old man yells at cloud because he can’t buy 4k discs, but another one yelled for LPs to be brought back and he got his wish.

Basically the movie industry (the major Hollywood studios) told Walmart and Target several years ago even before Covid they were getting out of the physical media business for streaming. Retailers have since been "managing" their exit strategies from this space. VInyl has such crazy profit margins there's enough juice for retailers to keep stocking them for the moment.

These are top-down corporate decisions only marginally related to waning consumer demand.

That wouldn’t surprise me, but was that before or after Target Ticket was killed off? With that gone, they won’t even be getting any piece of the digital market.

It would be interesting to see the sales figures that led up to all of this. I won’t deny that they’ve been declining, but it still seems like they’d have to be really bad for stores to start dropping discs altogether. Of course the studios have been pushing that decline by releasing new movies on digital early, so it’s not as big a deal when the discs finally do hit shelves.

Not really. The floor space won't be empty. It will be filled with products that sell better and may have higher margin. I assume and hope they have plenty of analysts who have looked into the numbers.

So you don't go to Target for anything practical like food, medicine, clothes and household items? It's just a "Movie and Music store" to you like The Wherehouse and Suncoast?

It will survive without movies and music

Uh, no, actually the one near me has been my regular place for picking up everyday stuff but I made a lot of impulse buys when doing that back when they actually carried a lot of movies.

My issue is, and I can say this having worked at the main office of Tower Records, is that stores like this sold movies at a loss just to get people in the stores. Tower would have lost money competing with that (not made less profit but actually LOST money, as meeting those prices would mean selling for less than what they even paid for them- I was able to look up the actual cost of everything they sold there) but at least if they were still in business now they would still be selling movies in one form or another. I wouldn’t care if Best Buy or Target stopped selling movies if we still had Tower, Virgin or even Suncoast (remember how much their prices were made fun of here?) to fall back on but they’re all gone now. That leaves Walmart as the only place here to buy new movies, and that’s really pathetic. They could drop them at any time also. Other than that, all we’ve got now is ordering online and I have many reasons for preferring to shop in stores instead.

I know Target won’t go out of business over this (Best Buy is more in danger of that as movies relate more to the other main things they sell, and they’ve pissed off the people who would buy it) but as a former Tower employee I feel strongly enough that loss-leaders helped to put them out of business and I won’t support them myself. Instead I’ll buy more of my food at REAL supermarkets which probably pay their employees better anyways.

Wait, so you bought your entire collection at near full price and never bought anything that was a "loss leader?" If so, kudos to your resolve but I think Suncoast, et al. would have been toast even if Target never entered the media picture.

Well, we’re all guilty of buying from whoever had the lowest price. I even stabbed Tower in the back a few times when “big box stores” had stuff for less than what I couldn’t gotten them for with my employee discount. That was certainly dumb of me in hindsight, but I never imagined these stores would just give up on movies altogether AFTER they put all the specialized stores out of business.

Hypothetical situation: Suppose I ran a chain of gas stations, and decided to attract business by selling women’s cosmetics as a loss-leader. I’d lose money on that but people would be drawn in to also fill up and maybe buy some overpriced snacks while there. I sell so many cosmetics that the stores that specialize in those lose business and eventually go under until I’m one of the last places in town you can get cosmetics at all. Then for whatever reason, demand for women’s cosmetics goes down or I just decide they don’t fit in with my business plan anymore, so I stop selling it and now there’s no other place to buy it at all. I’m sure some here will call that example ridiculous, but it’s sort of the same thing that’s happening here.

Am I reading correctly that you're angry that Target is not selling DVDs in some stores now, even though you are also angry that they used to sell DVDs in stores?

I'll admit I almost never purchased anything at Suncoast and the like, those mall chains had great shelves to browse but their prices were ridiculous most of the time.

You know what?

I'm just going to say it: I don't think this is true at all.

I don't think there is a single Target that is no longer selling movies.

I invite anyone to demonstrate otherwise.

I stand by this.

The younger me would have hopped in my car to test this theory.

Thankfully I am now old and tired.

I was at my local Target today and saw that they did just remove the small movie section that they used to have. In the last few years it had been reduced to one small aisle of shelves and two 4-sided display shelves, but that’s all gone now. It was just there a week or two ago so it’s very recent. There may still be an end cap here or there that has movies, but I didn’t see any.

Waitasec, you're telling me that less than 2 months before Black Friday, your Target, honest and true, just plain pulled all their movies?! What's there now? I just have to see this!

Still waiting on all of those "reports" about it, too.

I read somewhere it was official….

That second video didn't have any tour of a store so I skipped it but both the first and third showed that there are still movies, just greatly greatly reduced. I do find it funny that people are complaining that of all things, books (and vinyl) are "taking over" the shelves.

It's a shame that there's absolutely nowhere else to buy movies now.

In a Target earlier today I visit every couple months or so, they had zero movies. No endcaps at the checkout aisles, no freestanding displays near the mobile phone section. The small Book and music section was still there.

They did have more Funko Pops than ever before.