I’m actually rather surprised to find that this wasn’t phased out a long time ago. I’m in Canada where there is no Target, mind you, but I just cant picture the last time having ever seen someone writing out a cheque at any store.
To speculate, I'recon the top two reasons would be: dedicated bank account for home expenses; purchaser doesn't have the money today, but expects to have it deposited before the cheque clears "in a few days".
The check gets scanned, ID collected, and it's reported to a third party financial institution that basically evaluates the customer's creditworthiness and issues credit to the store to cover the check. (If the check were to bounce, it would be their problem to deal with.)
This also means checks can be instantly denied by that third party, if their system is not confident enough that the collection will be trouble free. Which is...not uncommon for the sort of people who want to write a check to buy an appliance, rather than using a credit card. Which then involves belligerence when it's denied.