What is it about Target?

Have you ever met anyone who doesn't like Target?  Who would rather say, "no thanks," when someone asks if they want to do a run?  For a long time, I just went along with it, not questioning the universal appeal of a mass market chain retailer.  But lately, I am finding it kind of weird. People with a wide range in tastes, incomes, geographic locations, family status, etc, all say the same thing- Target has everything and I never go in without spending at least $100.  I should admit here, at the risk of sounding like a snob, that I am decidedly NOT a Walmart person so Target is about the closest I have to an obsession with mass marketers.  I'd like to think my Walmart antipathy is not a class thing but more the result of being a textile analyst in the mid to late 1990s and watching one textile mill go out of business after the other.  Every last person at those mills blamed the loss of business on the mass market retailers with Walmart being chief among them.  Anyway- I digress.  This isn't about Walmart but why everyone loves Target.  

I admit to being a late comer to Target mania.  I didn't start shopping there until after I moved to VA from DC in late 2001.  Course before then, I didn't own a house and was furnishing my apts mainly out of family cast offs and quirky finds from Urban Outfitters (a definitely misguided attempt at hipness.)  But the addition of a (town)house and four years later child essentially solidified it for me.  I need Target.  I need to feel economical but still somewhat stylish.  How is it that a mass marketer can lure you in by feeding your need to feel quirky and a little different from everyone else?  The Target addiction is so bad among my peers that there have been days when Isabel has walked into preschool wearing the exact same shirt as three of her classmates.  

Today I made a Target run and ended up spending $170.  I still am not sure how.  Somewhere between the silver reindeer statuette, the Archer Farms caramel apple pancake mix, gift cards, gift tags, and cat presents from Santa, I spent way more than I should of.  There are some days I want to cry over the general homogenization of taste and shopping impulses, but then I grab my latte, fill up the trunk with goodies from Trader Joe's and get over it.