Target, Kohl's Upping Their Digital Game

• by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, Yesterday, 1:10 PM
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In advance of the holiday onslaught, both Target and Kohl’s are sharpening their digital hooks, hoping to win more shoppers over with omnichannel offerings.

Target has updated its Price Match Policy with a digital expansion, offering matches against more of its competitors, including warehouse clubs Costco and Sam’s Clubs, as well as giving shoppers more time to claim bargains. While price-matching has been available in its stores, it now works on Target.com and covers Amazon, as well as 29 other online competitors. 

And instead of just one week to make a price adjustment, shoppers now have 14 days.

And Kohl’s says it is testing same-day delivery in some locations. It has also created a new store mode for its mobile app to personalize the in-store experience, which allows shoppers to search that store’s inventory and find promotions that can be applied to purchases, such as Kohl’s Cash or coupons.

The Menomonee Falls, Wisc.-based retailer is also offering more payment options, including Apple Pay within the Kohl’s app, and enhancements to its mobile wallet.

And with the introduction of an omnichannel shopping bag, it’s hoping to ease shopping across devices. And it is also expanding its buy online, pick up in stores option, previously available only on desktops and laptops, to smartphones and tablets as well.

So far, experts are predicting solid gains for retailers in the coming season, with digital becoming an even bigger component of instore shopping. eMarketer is forecasting an overall gain of 5.6% to $885.7 billion, with ecommerce sales rising 13.9% to $79.4 billion. (And it predicts m-commerce sales this year will rise 32.2%.) And consulting company Deloitte, while predicting a smaller overall game of just 4%, says that omnichannel behaviors are so entrenched it expects 64% of all in-store purchases to have had some kind of digital interaction beforehand, much of it from smartphones.