Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #607

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
By Robert Passikoff, Contributor
That’s the title of one of the most recognizable holiday songs ever written. When Meredith Wilson wrote it back in 1951 it was originally called “It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas” but whichev- er title you prefer it’s more appropriate this moment in time than it was 60 years ago. Because it is. Looking like Christmas. Earlier and earlier and earlier.
Over the past 5 years retail- ers have started to market for the holidays earlier and earlier. More than 90 days ago you could purchase Christmas and Chanukah gift-wrap and greetings cards at major retailers. Official “Christmas sales” are becoming a thing of the past. Oh, don’t worry. There’ll still be sales, but they won’t be as big or deep as they were, say, back in 2006. Retailers have smartened up regard- ing inventory control, so they’re actually planning on not having a lot of surplus stock that they’d have to put
on “sale” a week before Christmas.
Nah, now there’s always sales, and consumers are on to that. Given an inability to create meaningful levels of retail brand differentiation and a uniformity of merchan- dise range on offer, what else can the retailers do? They’re afraid that if they don’t move merchandise now – before some other store – they’ll be out a sale.
Consumers are on to all this so they’ve started buying earlier and earlier for the hol- idays. Buying patterns have changed dramatically since Wilson wrote his song. In fact, in a recent study con- ducted by Brand Keys, 66% of the 16,000 consumers surveyed indicated they had already begun their holiday shopping, looking for deals and sales before ‘Black Friday’ or ‘Cyber Monday.’ Sixty-percent (60%) of con- sumers are talking to each other and comparing prices before they check out the brand. They think “category”
first, “value” secondarily, and unless you happen to
be Apple or Tiffany or Chanel, “brand” comes in a distant third. With all-sales- all-the-time, it’s getting hard- er and harder to tell when one holiday begins and another ends, but con- sumers don’t care as long as they end up as the benefici- aries of that marketing approach.
So reports that “holiday spend will only be up by X%” may be misleading, since consumers are no longer doing their holiday shopping within the traditional 30-day “holiday period” between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but are spreading spend over a shopping interval more than 4 times that, and may be spending far more than has been reported thus far.
Charles Dickens had Ebenezer Scrooge promise, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Retailers are apparently doing that too.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine