Target Corporation

Target Corporation is an American retail corporation headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the eighth largest retailer in the United States, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Target established itself as the discount division of the Dayton's Company of Minneapolis in 1962. It began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s, and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed Target Corporation in 2000, and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive, highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Target Canada subsidiary in the early 2010s, but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States.