All they want for Christmas is more time.
Faced with the shortest holiday shopping season since 2013, retailers are trying to figure out ways to get into the minds—and wallets—of shoppers sooner.
Walmart, for instance, began offering holiday deals online for toys, TVs and mini trampolines nearly a week before Halloween. And the owner of Zales and Kay Jewelers said it spent more on advertising between August and October.
Target says it’s spending $50 million more on payroll during the fourth quarter than it did a year ago so that there’ll be more workers on hand to help harried shoppers scrambling to get their shopping done in a shorter amount of time.
“This is going to be a very compressed holiday season,” Target’s CEO Brian Cornell told reporters during last week’s holiday preview in New York. “We lose one full weekend during the holiday. Every single day counts, from Black Friday to Christmas Eve.”
This year, Thanksgiving will land on Nov. 28, the latest possible date it can be. That leaves the holiday shopping season with six fewer days than last year.
Adobe Analytics predicts a loss of $1 billion in revenue from a shortened season. Still, it expects online sales will reach $143.7 billion, up 14.1% from last year’s holiday season.
Amazon said it doesn’t expect much of an impact.
Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at trade group National Retail Federation, says he baked the shorter season into his holiday forecast. However, the real drivers of sales, he says, will be the economy and the job market. Read the full story.
