More than two weeks have passed since Target (NYSE:TGT) found itself facing incensed stakeholder with pitchforks upset by the ideology of the beneficiary of one of the company's political donations. Positioned broadly in the media as a reputation story, we took interest and found no measurable effect last week. We return again to see if there was latency to the reaction. And we hear - silence.

Turning to the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index metrics, Target continues its now 4-week trend of occupying the #1 reputation rank, the 100th percentile, relative to a peer group comprising 16 Department Stores. It has also continued to narrow the economic return gap relative to the median of its peer group, rising another 2%. All of which, in a purely quantitative sense, affirms our previous conclusion that the aforementioned incident, managed as it was with multiple apologies, was limited to a reputation non-event from Target's perspective.

Meanwhile, Walmart (NYSE:WMT) continues to face the looming threat of a reputation crisis tied to its historic labor issues that may overshadow the reputation it has been building around its committment to sustainability. So thought  we'd compare the two sets of reputation metrics by creating a custom peer grouping of 141 Retail companies. (We are only responding to your demand: our TGT, WMT, and Big Box retail blogs are the most widely read of our entire library.) 

Within this peer group, Target began the trailing twelve month period in the 89th percentile and is now in the 92nd percentile. It is underperforming economically the median of the custom peer group by 0.74%. In the second chart, we see that its exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) reputation ranking volatility has been decreasing over the past quarter, and in the third chart, its most recent trailing twelve week reputation velocity is a positive 2 percentile points per quarter. In short, a good reputation holding steady with no evidence of material consequences from the incident.



Within this same peer group, Walmart began the trailing twelve month period in the 96th percentile and is now ranked in the 91st percentile. It is underperforming economically the median of the custom peer group by 19.12%. In the second chart, we see that its exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) reputation ranking volatility, having climbed a bit at the end of the previous quarter, has been decreasing recently to a very low level, and in the third chart, its most recent trailing twelve week reputation velocity is a negative 1 percentile point per quarter. In short, a good reputation slowly and gently diminishing.  



Closing the loop on the original incident involving Target these past few weeks, there is no evidence that Walmart benefited in terms of either a boost in reputation or economic return.