Kohl’s

public company

Kohl's

Industry Retail

A public department-store retailer selling apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty, credit products, and loyalty-driven promotions. Kohl’s remains weak because practical middle-market access is undermined by coupon/credit capture, apparel externalities, customer-data collection, and shareholder governance.

Why this matters: Kohl’s is a major middle-market comparison against Macy’s, Target, TJX, Amazon, and off-price apparel chains.

Letter grade D Extractive High confidence (AI) Rubric gcd-rubric-v1

Final Score 4* D - Extractive

* Tentative scaffolding score. Not human-checked or final.

Base Material17
Bonus+0
Cap35Ownership <= 2 and Governance <= 2
After Cap17
Penalties-13
!Not Verified
Represent this organization?

Request verification to have the evidence record checked against primary materials and organization-supplied documents. Verification does not buy a higher score; scores change only when review finds factual errors, omissions, or miscalibration.

Request verification

Evaluation Overview

D - Extractive

The score turns mainly on Product Integrity, with the largest penalty coming from Ecological Harm.

Strengths

  • Product Integrity3/5
  • Ownership2/10
  • Governance2/10

Penalties

  • Ecological Harm-3
  • Subscription Capture-2
  • Accountability Opacity-2
  • Surveillance Capture-2

Evidence state

  • ConfidenceHigh confidence (AI)
  • ThoroughnessDeveloped (AI)
  • Linked claims22
  • Direct axis claims22
  • Coverage17/17

Scoring Axes

Axis Score Why this score
Ownership
?
Control rights: shareholder-dominated at 0, worker cooperative control at 10.
2 / 10

Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • Kohl's is not governed by workers, customers, suppliers, or affected communities; formal control remains with shareholders, family owners, parent-company owners, creditors, or managers. [2]
Governance
?
Binding decision authority: centralized control at 0, democratic stakeholder control at 10.
2 / 10

Kohl's gives stakeholders ordinary market voice, employment voice, or customer-service channels, but not binding democratic control over major institutional decisions.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • context Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • Kohl's gives stakeholders ordinary market voice, employment voice, or customer-service channels, but not binding democratic control over major institutional decisions. [4]
Extraction
?
Surplus allocation, wage share, CEO pay ratio, margins, and structured extraction judgment.
2 / 10

Kohl's sells useful goods while retaining a conventional retail structure in which surplus, pricing power, supplier pressure, and labor control are primarily managerial or investor-facing.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • context Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • Kohl's sells useful goods while retaining a conventional retail structure in which surplus, pricing power, supplier pressure, and labor control are primarily managerial or investor-facing. [5]
Labor Sovereignty
?
Worker power: coercive conditions at 0, co-determination or ownership at 7. Employee dissatisfaction matters only when source-backed evidence shows concrete limits on worker agency, such as coercive scheduling, retaliation, wage theft, harassment, unsafe conditions, suppression of worker voice, or extreme turnover.
1 / 7

Kohl's workers remain in ordinary employer-managed retail jobs rather than worker-owned, codetermined, or union-secured control structures.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • Kohl's workers remain in ordinary employer-managed retail jobs rather than worker-owned, codetermined, or union-secured control structures. [6]
Solidarity with the Unemployed
?
Treatment of exits and nonworkers, including severance, redeployment, and non-competes.
1 / 7

Kohl's does not show unusual source-backed protection for workers who exit, people outside paid work, or customers with weak bargaining power beyond ordinary retail access.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • Kohl's does not show unusual source-backed protection for workers who exit, people outside paid work, or customers with weak bargaining power beyond ordinary retail access. [7]
Loss-Bearing Fidelity
?
Willingness to absorb costs to preserve values, workers, users, and public obligations.
2 / 7

Kohl's still shifts important costs from data collection, product churn, sourcing, packaging, pharmacy, fashion, or local-market power onto customers, workers, suppliers, or the public.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • context Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • context Kohl’s coupon, loyalty, promotional, and credit-card ecosystem makes the effective price difficult to compare cleanly and encourages repeat-purchase dependence. [8]
  • context Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts. [9]
  • context Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens. [10]
  • Kohl's still shifts important costs from data collection, product churn, sourcing, packaging, pharmacy, fashion, or local-market power onto customers, workers, suppliers, or the public. [11]
Market Conduct
?
Pricing fairness, switching costs, lock-in, and rent extraction.
2 / 5

Kohl's shapes customer choice through scale, loyalty, credit, pharmacy, promotion, fashion, recommendation, or data systems rather than through simple transparent one-time transactions alone.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s coupon, loyalty, promotional, and credit-card ecosystem makes the effective price difficult to compare cleanly and encourages repeat-purchase dependence. [8]
  • Kohl's shapes customer choice through scale, loyalty, credit, pharmacy, promotion, fashion, recommendation, or data systems rather than through simple transparent one-time transactions alone. [12]
Product Integrity
?
Preservation of quality rather than degradation for monetization.
3 / 5

Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • Kohl's sells products or services with practical value, but product integrity is limited where quality is mixed with churn, exposure risk, identity marketing, or opaque sourcing. [13]
Scale Integrity
?
Whether growth improves or degrades fairness and accountability.
2 / 5

Kohl's uses scale to improve access and convenience while also concentrating purchasing power, customer data, supplier leverage, and environmental burden.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services. [3]
  • context Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities. [1]
  • context Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens. [10]
  • Kohl's uses scale to improve access and convenience while also concentrating purchasing power, customer data, supplier leverage, and environmental burden. [14]

Penalties

Penalty Applied Why this penalty
Ecological Harm
?
Footprint, trajectory, irreversibility, culpability, and scale, including whether ecological harm is central to the model and continued after credible notice. Range: -30 to 0.
-3

Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens. [10]
  • Kohl's depends on retail operations, packaging, logistics, refrigeration, apparel, beauty, fuel, pharmacy, or product churn with material environmental costs. [15]
Toxic Products
?
Current sale of products whose ordinary use, exposure, ingredients, residues, packaging, or formulation creates toxic, addictive, or consumer-safety risk. Food products receive at least light scrutiny for artificial colors, artificial flavors, petro-derived additives, pesticide residues, contaminants, endocrine-disrupting packaging, and ultra-processed formulation. Ordinary adult nightlife or alcohol service is not penalized by itself without evidence of predatory marketing, youth targeting, addiction-extractive design, or unusual product-safety misconduct. Range: -5 to 0.
-1

Kohl's sells product categories such as pharmacy goods, supplements, cosmetics, fragrance, candles, cheap plastics, candy, or personal-care products where exposure or safety risk is material.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl's sells product categories such as pharmacy goods, supplements, cosmetics, fragrance, candles, cheap plastics, candy, or personal-care products where exposure or safety risk is material. [16]
Animal Testing
?
Direct animal testing, contract animal testing, animal-testing-dependent product development, or business lines where current safety/regulatory approval normally relies on animal experiments. Stronger penalties apply where animal testing is core, repeated, non-optional, or avoidable; documented cruelty-free or non-animal methods reduce or eliminate the penalty. Range: -8 to 0.
-1

Retailers that sell beauty, cosmetics, or personal-care assortments carry animal-testing exposure through the product categories they choose to distribute.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl's has cosmetics retail exposure animal-testing exposure based on its listed business model and current profile description: A public department-store retailer selling apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty, credit products, and loyalty-driven promotions. Kohl’s remains weak because practical middle-market access is undermined by coupon/cre… [22]
Subscription Capture
?
Manipulative recurring-payment, automatic-renewal, cancellation-friction, bundling, trial-conversion, or refund designs that profit from inertia or confusion. Range: -5 to 0.
-2

Kohl’s coupon, loyalty, promotional, and credit-card ecosystem makes the effective price difficult to compare cleanly and encourages repeat-purchase dependence.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl’s coupon, loyalty, promotional, and credit-card ecosystem makes the effective price difficult to compare cleanly and encourages repeat-purchase dependence. [8]
  • Kohl's uses loyalty, credit, recurring, rewards, promotions, account history, or linked-service design that makes the transaction stickier or harder to compare cleanly. [17]
Accountability Opacity
?
Material opacity, reputation laundering, or hidden accountability structures that prevent public accountability. Range: -2 to 0.
-2

Kohl's leaves ordinary customers unable to easily compare the full data, sourcing, ingredient, pricing, supply-chain, or loyalty tradeoffs before buying.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts. [9]
  • context Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens. [10]
  • Kohl's leaves ordinary customers unable to easily compare the full data, sourcing, ingredient, pricing, supply-chain, or loyalty tradeoffs before buying. [18]
Identity Capture
?
Customer pressure, employee pressure, and pervasive identity saturation. Range: -3 to 0.
-1

Kohl's turns consumption into beauty, fashion, wellness, status, fandom, sport, youth, scent, or lifestyle identity rather than simple product access.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl's turns consumption into beauty, fashion, wellness, status, fandom, sport, youth, scent, or lifestyle identity rather than simple product access. [19]
Surveillance Capture
?
Invasive surveillance, unreasonably non-optional tracking, facial recognition, biometric identification, or AI behavior scanning of customers, workers, bystanders, or the public. Range: -5 to 0.
-2

Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts.

Linked evidence
  • Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts. [9]
  • Kohl's privacy materials show collection through stores, apps, websites, accounts, loyalty, pharmacy, advertising, device, preference, or transaction data channels. [20]
Ideological Disavowal
?
Concealed ideology presented as neutrality, expertise, professional necessity, public-service administration, market inevitability, or non-ideological common sense while exercising power. Range: -3 to 0.
-1

Kohl's presents retail access as neutral consumer choice while underplaying institutional choices embedded in data collection, loyalty design, sourcing, identity marketing, supplier power, and pricing architecture.

Linked evidence
  • context Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts. [9]
  • Kohl's presents retail access as neutral consumer choice while underplaying institutional choices embedded in data collection, loyalty design, sourcing, identity marketing, supplier power, and pricing architecture. [21]

Bonus Credits

No bonus credits applied in this version.

Confidence Basis

Confidence Basis

Confidence is computed from the evidence trail and review state, not typed into the profile by hand.

High 82/100

22 verified linked claims 22 direct axis claims 0 disputed claims 17/17 components covered

This confidence label measures the source-backed evidence trail. AI-scaffolded scores remain tentative until human review.

Claim confidence 13/20

22 verified linked claims

Source quality 16/18

Best source per verified claim, weighted by institutional reliability

Direct axis-specific claims 14/18

22 direct claims across 17 active components

Dispute load 12/12

0 disputed claims on this entity

Recency 10/10

Newest accepted timestamp: May 13, 2026

Reviewer status 7/12

Human-reviewed components score higher than AI scaffolding

Component coverage 10/10

17/17 evidence-bearing components have direct support

Evidence State

Evidence State

Profile stateAI draft / human-pending
VerificationUnverified
ConfidenceHigh confidence (AI)
ThoroughnessDeveloped (AI)
Correction routeUse “Challenge this rating” for factual errors, missing counterevidence, source problems, or calculation mistakes.
Company responseCompany representatives can submit source-backed corrections; payment never changes scores or reviewer authority.

Claims and Sources

Claims are the evidence record. Each claim needs a source link, axis category, status, confidence level, and timestamp before it can support a score.

* Tentative scaffolding score. Not human-checked or final.
1Kohl’s is public and shareholder governed, with no binding control for workers, shoppers, suppliers, or communities.

Ownership Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

2Kohl's is not governed by workers, customers, suppliers, or affected communities; formal control remains with shareholders, family owners, parent-company owners, creditors, or managers.

Ownership Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

3Kohl’s sells apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty products, loyalty promotions, and credit-linked retail services.

Product Integrity Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

4Kohl's gives stakeholders ordinary market voice, employment voice, or customer-service channels, but not binding democratic control over major institutional decisions.

Governance Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

5Kohl's sells useful goods while retaining a conventional retail structure in which surplus, pricing power, supplier pressure, and labor control are primarily managerial or investor-facing.

Extraction Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

6Kohl's workers remain in ordinary employer-managed retail jobs rather than worker-owned, codetermined, or union-secured control structures.

Labor Sovereignty Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

7Kohl's does not show unusual source-backed protection for workers who exit, people outside paid work, or customers with weak bargaining power beyond ordinary retail access.

Solidarity Unemployed Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

8Kohl’s coupon, loyalty, promotional, and credit-card ecosystem makes the effective price difficult to compare cleanly and encourages repeat-purchase dependence.

Subscription Capture Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

9Kohl’s privacy materials describe collection across stores, websites, apps, accounts, loyalty, credit, advertising, and consumer-health contexts.

Surveillance Capture Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

10Kohl’s apparel, home-goods, beauty, packaging, returns, and store footprint create meaningful ecological and product-risk burdens.

Ecological Harm Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

11Kohl's still shifts important costs from data collection, product churn, sourcing, packaging, pharmacy, fashion, or local-market power onto customers, workers, suppliers, or the public.

Loss Bearing Fidelity Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

12Kohl's shapes customer choice through scale, loyalty, credit, pharmacy, promotion, fashion, recommendation, or data systems rather than through simple transparent one-time transactions alone.

Market Conduct Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

13Kohl's sells products or services with practical value, but product integrity is limited where quality is mixed with churn, exposure risk, identity marketing, or opaque sourcing.

Product Integrity Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

14Kohl's uses scale to improve access and convenience while also concentrating purchasing power, customer data, supplier leverage, and environmental burden.

Scale Integrity Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

15Kohl's depends on retail operations, packaging, logistics, refrigeration, apparel, beauty, fuel, pharmacy, or product churn with material environmental costs.

Ecological Harm Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

16Kohl's sells product categories such as pharmacy goods, supplements, cosmetics, fragrance, candles, cheap plastics, candy, or personal-care products where exposure or safety risk is material.

Toxic Products Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

17Kohl's uses loyalty, credit, recurring, rewards, promotions, account history, or linked-service design that makes the transaction stickier or harder to compare cleanly.

Subscription Capture Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

18Kohl's leaves ordinary customers unable to easily compare the full data, sourcing, ingredient, pricing, supply-chain, or loyalty tradeoffs before buying.

Accountability Opacity Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

19Kohl's turns consumption into beauty, fashion, wellness, status, fandom, sport, youth, scent, or lifestyle identity rather than simple product access.

Identity Capture Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

20Kohl's privacy materials show collection through stores, apps, websites, accounts, loyalty, pharmacy, advertising, device, preference, or transaction data channels.

Surveillance Capture Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

21Kohl's presents retail access as neutral consumer choice while underplaying institutional choices embedded in data collection, loyalty design, sourcing, identity marketing, supplier power, and pricing architecture.

Ideological Disavowal Verified Medium confidence AI-generated / human-pending

AI scaffold

22Kohl's has cosmetics retail exposure animal-testing exposure based on its listed business model and current profile description: A public department-store retailer selling apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, beauty, credit products, and loyalty-driven promotions. Kohl’s remains weak because practical middle-market access is undermined by coupon/cre…

Animal Testing Verified Medium confidence Human-reviewed

Alternatives

Competitors

Help Improve This Profile

Submit source-backed evidence or challenge a specific claim, source, axis value, or calculation below.

How This Page Is Maintained

Evidence comes in through contributors, is checked by verifiers, and is synthesized by reviewers. Founder authority remains narrow and visible; scores recalculate when verified claims or the rubric change.

Civic Note

Incorporation, limited liability, market access, and other institutional privileges are public grants. Good Companies Directory treats those privileges as conditional on accountability to workers, users, communities, and the public.

Submit evidence for Kohl's Add one source-backed fact for review.

Challenge this rating Point to a specific score, claim, source, or calculation problem.

Audit Log

Recent public changes for this company or group. The full audit log is part of the Transparency record.

No company-specific audit entries have been published yet.

View Full Audit Log