Target is portrayed in the book "Naked Statistics" as having some pretty advanced data collection and modeling techniques -- they could figure out which of their shoppers were pregnant and adjust their weekly ads sent to those particular households depending on that information. This was in fact too good because the pregnant woman ended up being a teenager, and had an angry father calling demanding to speak to a manager.

What any of this means to me is if they have capabilities like that I am sure they made an informed decision based on where they see the market heading and decided this would be a purchase that would increase the bottom line, not grasping for straws as you say.