It was a brief stint for Target in Canada. Less than two years after opening there, Target announced last week that it would close its 133 Canadian stores. Some Canadian Target customers responded emotionally to the news on Target Canada’s Facebook website (“totally heartbroken,” “please don’t go,” “good riddance,” “you obviously don’t understand Canadians”).

Target CEO Brian Cornell decided to close the stores after determining that they would not become profitable until at least 2021. The market exit will stop Target’s continued losses in Canada and help the company focus on its strategic initiatives in the U.S. such as smaller stores in urban places, mobile and online, and its cheap chic merchandising focus—to “be cool again,” as Cornell told Target employees in the fall.

What caused the retailer’s problems in Canada, and what are the lessons learned?

In Target’s annual 2012 report, then-CEO Gregg Steinhafel mentioned Target’s “two years of exceptional dedicated and hard work” to prepare for the international expansion. However, in the end, the market entry seemed rushed and oversized, with 124 stores opening within ten months.

The Canada expansion was announced in January 2013 when Target bought the 220 leases of Zellers, a declining and now defunct Canadian discount chain, from Hudson’s Bay. Target opened its first stores just a couple of months later despite the enormous remodeling work required. Maybe taking over the Zellers leases was too good an opportunity to pass up. But it may have led Target to launch with a bigger footprint than advisable.

Global expansion had been on Target’s mind for some time, and growth through physical stores rather than e-commerce seemed to be the retailer’s preferred path. Canada in particular held appeal as it is not only geographically close and mostly English-speaking but also because Target is familiar to the many Canadians who had visited the stores in the U.S. In addition, Canada was less affected by the recession than the U.S., increasing the appeal of a Canadian venture. What Target may not have fully appreciated was that the Canadian discount sector is a particularly tough market. Unlike the luxury segment, the discount market is fairly saturated by competitors such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Giant Tiger, and Sears.

To entice shoppers to switch, Target had to differentiate itself from all the other discount retail choices. It also had to address two kinds of customers in Canada: those already familiar with the retailer from their U.S. encounters and those new to the brand. While Target did a great job marketing its launch with a multiplatform ad strategy—TV, print, billboards, social media and so on— introducing itself as the new neighbour (notice the localized spelling), its execution was flawed.

The store locations were often out of the way, and stores weren’t up to par with Target’s U.S. look. The new stores also struggled with distribution challenges and shelf replenishment, leading to stock-outs. Particularly for Canadians familiar with Target, the poorly stocked shelves, an assortment that differed from the U.S. stores’, and, often, higher prices than in the U.S. all combined to discourage traffic. These issues also made it hard to win customers who were new to the brand. First impressions count, and once customers are disappointed it’s hard to win back their trust. Given the executional issues, Target wasn’t able to implement its differentiated U.S. concept in Canada.

As Target found, international expansion is difficult, even for top retailers. Tesco’s Fresh & Easy stores in the U.S. went bankrupt; Best Buy closed its stores in the UK after less than two years; Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany and South Korea; and Carrefour left Algeria and Thailand.

Still, there are many globally successful retailers. Their success is based on a competitive advantage achieved principally either through differentiation of merchandise or customer experience (Apple, J. Crew, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, Galeries Lafayette) or cost/price leadership (Wal-Mart, Amazon, IKEA, Aldi, H&M, Zara, Uniqlo). In addition, successful global expansion requires deft adaptation to the local markets — the customers, competition, culture and customs, local laws, and so on.

Consider J. Crew’s approach when it entered Canada in 2011. It opened one store in Toronto and then gradually added stores across the country. Like Target, J. Crew had customers that were familiar with J. Crew and unhappy with its Canadian prices, which were 15% higher than in the U.S. But J. Crew responded quickly, absorbing the duties on online purchases and offering a flat shipping fee to reduce the cross-country price differential. It also reverted to allowing Canadian customers to shop the U.S. J. Crew website in U.S. currency. As a result of its careful market entry and execution, J. Crew has been a great success in Canada, growing from one to 16 stores within three years and adding a men’s collection to its original women’s-only line.

In the end, Target struggled with the translation of its successful U.S. concept to Canada and execution there. A slower rollout of stores, the model that worked so well for J. Crew, might have helped it to gain experience in the market and adjust its strategy before expanding further.