Retail foot traffic tracker Placer.ai has released a study looking at the prospects faced by new leaders taking the reins at Walmart and Target, John Furner and Michael Fiddelke, respectively, as the companies’ fourth-quarter results announcements approach.
Walmart’s fourth-quarter earnings release is set for February 19, and Target’s is set for March 3.
Walmart President and CEO Furner and Target CEO Fiddelke are starting from distinctly different positions, according to Placer.ai. Walmart is enjoying solid momentum, supported by positive visitation trends and consistent comparable sales growth, while Target has struggled to regain traction amid softer demand, with discretionary sales lagging.
After a relatively modest summer, Walmart’s store traffic strengthened meaningfully in the back half of 2025, as the company closed the fourth quarter with visits up 2.3% year over year, Placer.ai reported. Advances accelerated further in January 2026, helped in part by an additional Saturday on the calendar.
Traffic performance aligns with the strength Walmart has reported in recent quarterly sales results. For the period ending October 31, 2025, Walmart posted 4.5% comparable sales growth in the United States, driven by higher transactions and larger baskets. Walmart e-commerce, up a robust 28% year over year, continues as the primary growth engine. Yet, the positive traffic trends point to solid in-store demand and the importance of brick-and-mortar stores. In all, Furner’s job will be to keep up or speed up the pace of gains.
On February 4, Walmart announced it had opened its second ground-up new-generation supercenter, in Jacksonville, FL (pictured above), with the first having debuted during April in Cypress, TX. The stores fit into a growth plan including 150 new stores opening over the next several years, Walmart has stated.
Target’s Fiddelke faces a more complex task, Placer.ai indicated. The most recent earnings release by the company included a 2.7% year-over-year decline in comparable sales, driven by a 3.8% drop in in-store comps as discretionary categories remained soft. Target digital comps rose 2.4%, supported largely by same-day services, growth insufficient to offset store-level weakness.
Foot traffic at Target through 2025’s second half stumbled, with year-over-year visits declining in every month except October and fourth-quarter visits down, according to Placer.ai. Traffic ticked up in January, but that improvement was likely influenced, at least in part, by the extra Saturday in the month this year, Placer.ai pointed out.
For Target, the data suggests that a sustained recovery will depend on the effectiveness of Fiddelke’s turnaround strategy, one that centers on sharper merchandising curation and improved guest experience, Placer.ai noted. Under Fiddelke, Target intends to re-engage discretionary shoppers, and a review of weekday versus weekend traffic suggests the initiative is aimed at where the retailer is seeing the most pressure, Placer.ai added. Target experienced much steeper year-over-year declines on weekends, when more browsing and discretionary purchasing are likely to occur.
For its part, Target also intends to expand its physical store base. As Fiddelke took the reins, the company stated it would focus more effort on the Target supercenter format after several years during which the company developed a portfolio of smaller, often urban store concepts.
