"Store traffic grew by 6 percent, an unprecedented number and by far the strongest performance since the company began reporting this metric in 2008," said Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell on a conference call with investors. “We're currently benefiting from a very strong consumer environment, perhaps the strongest I've seen in my career."

Physical same-store sales grew by 5 percent during the quarter, and digital same-store sales surged by 40 percent. "Guests continue to respond to a growing menu of convenient fulfillment options, newness around our merchandising categories, freshly remodeled stores and a higher level of service across the chain,” Cornell said.

Moving forward, Target plans to boost sales by making stores the center of the company's infrastructure and supply chain, said COO John J. Mulligan. “Our stores will continue to be the key fulfillment note for our guests, whether that's a traditional store trip, a drive-up order, an in-store pickup order, a trip by a 'ship' shopper or a traditional e-commerce purchase ship from a local Target store.”

Target will continue to roll out small-format stores to reach shoppers in urban areas, and meanwhile the existing small-format stores are performing well, says Mulligan. “We opened six of these new locations in the second quarter, on top of the six we opened earlier in the year," he said. "These locations delivered high sales productivity along with gross-margin rates that are above the company average. We continue to see strong growth as these stores mature.” 

As of the end of the second quarter, Target is operating 26 mature small-format stores, Mulligan says, noting that, on average, this group saw high-single-digit comp growth during the quarter.