The holiday season for major retailers has begun earlier and earlier every year, but this year, it’s seemingly started a few weeks before Halloween.
In response to what is an economy that’s slowing, major retailers such as Kohl’s and Walmart have launched annual holiday sales this week as they race to get shoppers to spend whatever money they have at their store.
Walmart launched its “Walmart Deals” holiday savings event on Monday, with multiple discounts being offered on products for purchases made online through this Thursday. Included in the sales are toys, fashion, home and electronics products.
Just like previous years, the “Walmart Deals” is just the first of what should be multiple sales events that the retailer features in the lead-up to the all-important holiday shopping season.
Also on Monday, Kohl’s launched the Deal Dash event, which runs through Wednesday for its online shop as well as its 1,100 retail locations across the U.S. Discounts there will include categories such as Adidas, Levi’s and Nike, as well as other in-house brands they feature.
Amazon kicked off its “Prime Big Deal Days” on Tuesday, the second major shopping event that it’s held this year already. The shopping holiday, which lasts for 48 hours, provides members of its Prime subscription service exclusive discounts on thousands of different items on its website.
The first Prime Day was held in July of this year.
With inflation still high and interest rates continuing to soar, Americans are pulling their purse strings tight, which is worrying retailers who rely on the holiday shopping season to fuel their profits for the year.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released consumer spending data, which was weaker than many economists predicted for the second quarter. Consumer spending is a critical driver of the overall health of the U.S. economy.
Many major retailers are launching special sales events way in advance of the typical holiday shopping season in hopes of luring in the shoppers before they spend all the money they’ve allotted for the season.
Target already held its Target Circle Week, which offered various discounts to their members for the month’s first few days.
Even though it has launched holiday sales early this year – and even though the economy seems to be slumping, Walmart officials still said they had confidence in the willingness of consumers to spend during the upcoming holiday shopping season.
Back in August, John David Rainey, the company’s CFO, said:
“Consumers are not compromising on some of the holiday seasons.”
He pointed to consumers’ “willingness to spend” around other holidays such as the Fourth of July as proof that they’ll do the same over the next few months.
Adobe released its predictions for online holiday shopping sales – which spans from November 1 through December 31 – which shows that total holiday sales in that period will reach $221.8 billion. Those figures reached $211.6 billion last year, Adobe said.
That would represent a modest 4.8% increase, but an increase nonetheless.
