Dive Brief:

• Target is reopening its operations in Canada, sort of, with a new website that allows Canadians to order goods.

• But the site has prices much higher than what’s found in Target’s stores and website in the U.S.

• The move has prompted observers to question Target’s approach to Canadian shoppers, who are able to buy through Amazon with the kind of lower prices and shipping rates that online shoppers have come to expect.

Dive Insight:

Target may want to salvage its failed mission to Canada with this new move, perhaps motivated by healthy retail sales there, but Canadians aren’t responding well to its new site’s prices and especially its shipping rates. 

"$29 to ship a T-shirt, no thanks!" Canadian news outlet CBC News documents one shopper commenting online.

Many Canadians close to the U.S. border know the price and assortment available at Target stores here, and found Target’s Canadian stores, since closed, and now its website, decidedly lacking.

This second move isn’t doing much to make up for that failed venture, notes marketing expert and McMaster University professor Mandeep Malik. 

"My instinctive reaction [is] that this is something that we will collectively laugh about, like really?" Malik told CBC News.