Target CEO talks about new partnernship with CVS

Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell commented on the chain’s new partnership with CVS Health in a Q&A on Target’s blog, A Bullseye View. Here are some excerpts: 

Why isn’t Target investing its own resources in the in-store healthcare experience? Aren’t pharmacies and clinics an important part of delivering wellness for your guests?

Our current pharmacy and clinic businesses successfully drive traffic to our stores and receive favorable guest service scores. And we know guests appreciate the convenient access to healthcare services while making their Target run. That said, we also know wellness extends beyond healthcare and we believe this deal presents Target with an exciting opportunity.

Tapping an expert partner to operate pharmacies and clinics in our stores preserves its traffic-driving benefits and offers our guests access to proven, best-in-class services. Meanwhile, it gives Target greater bandwidth to focus on our strengths in product design, merchandising and marketing to grow Wellness as a signature category.  More and more, our guests want to lead healthy and active lifestyles, and they are thinking about wellness as part of everything they do.

 Moving forward, Target will focus on further strengthening our wellness offerings, giving guests more ways to eat well, be active and find natural and clean-label options – areas we know they are passionate about.

How will the co-development of stores work? And can you elaborate on these “new market offerings” you will explore with CVS Health?


CVS Health has a strong store development pipeline that includes great locations in communities ideally suited for small, flexible format stores. Target and CVS Health plan to carefully evaluate and select from sites in CVS Health’s current consideration set to jointly build five to 10 TargetExpress stores with a CVS/pharmacy inside. This will take place over a two year period following the deal close.

We have also agreed to explore a variety of future opportunities to collaborate with our guests’ needs in mind.

When will guests start to see changes?


This agreement has been approved by CVS Health management and by Target’s board of directors, and now requires regulatory approval. This process will take some time. Until then, it’s business as usual.

Both Target and CVS Health are committed to ensuring a smooth transition following the deal close, and look forward to sharing more with our guests when we can.

To read the full Q&A, click here.