The traditional retail calendar is becoming more and more obsolete

There’s plenty of data to support retailers’ rush to capitalize on seasonal and holiday spending. This year, only 24% of shoppers in the U.S. are waiting to start their holiday shopping in November or December, according to Gartner. The vast majority are shopping earlier or even year-round. Similarly, U.S. consumers and 50% in the U.K. are already making holiday purchases, a report from digital analytics company Quantum Metric found. 

It raises the question: Is the traditional retail calendar obsolete? 

Traditionally, retailers adhered to a very rigid and marketing calendar centered around standard promotional cycles like Black Friday and Cyber Monday that kicked off in November. These days, it’s no longer enough for retailers to have a predictable seasonal or holiday schedule. As more inflation-pinched shoppers spread out their purchases, brands are embracing longer seasonality and year-round promotions to take advantage of changing consumer behavior. Retailers that are slow to adapt may also get left behind. 

“Retailers always respond to consumer signals, and over the last few years, retailers who have pulled forward their holiday promotional calendars have experienced success and growth,” said Kassi Socha, director analyst at research firm Gartner.

To Bryan Gildenberg, founder and CEO of Confluencer Commerce, longer seasons are in part a ripple effect from the days of the pandemic, when bottlenecks in the world’s supply chain led to lengthy product delays on everything from toilet paper to Care Bears. In 2021, big-box retailers like Walmart paid to charter private cargo ships to circumvent supply-chain problems ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season. Retailers also reminded shoppers to order their gifts early to ensure on-time delivery because of ongoing supply-chain snafus. Meanwhile, e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon had to move up shipment deadlines to ensure they had enough inventory for both early shoppers and holiday sales events.

“Pulling it forward helps retailers manage inventory risk, which has become a much bigger priority for them since the inventory horror show that was Covid,” said Gildenberg. 

To be sure, the retail calendar was shifting well before the pandemic struck, with holiday shopping in particular beginning a little earlier every year. That’s in part due to Amazon’s Prime Day, one of the company’s biggest sales events of the year, which generally takes place in the middle of summer, a historically quiet time for retail sales. When Prime Day launched in 2015, it became so popular that retailers rushed in with competing promotions of their own to ensure that they didn’t lose sales to the retail giant. Then, in 2022, Amazon revealed it was hosting a second Prime Day in October, which helped drive demand throughout the year and pushed retailers to pull forward their holiday merchandise even more.

“In an Amazon world, it’s just too easy for the shoppers’ wallet to disappear before they get into shopping mode,” said Gildenberg. “I think that’s the primary motivation for retailers. They’re thinking, ‘If I don’t get there early, there may not be anything left.’”

Inflation has a lot to do with it, too. Shoppers are starting their holiday shopping earlier to find the best deal possible. While consumers have grown increasingly price-conscious over the past few years, “they continue to turn out and shop around holidays and other seasonal moments,” said Target CEO Brian Cornell during the retailer’s most recent earnings call. As such, retailers are leaning into seasonal events to get shoppers to open their wallets. 

But a deluge of pumpkin spice and Christmas decor in August may come at a price to retailers: Sixty-seven percent of consumers expect to have marketing fatigue by Nov. 1, per eMarketer, weeks before major holidays like Christmas even take place.

Still, other data suggests that it pays off to get a jump on seasonality. For example, Gartner data found that brands that begin holiday social media marketing in late summer and early fall experience 51% higher interactions per post on Instagram compared to non-holiday content, as well as a 109% increase in median interactions compared to holiday posts in November or December.

In other words, starting earlier leads to a higher engagement lift across social media. 

That’s true of holiday promotional emails, as well. There’s a large spike of retailer emails promoting selected seasonal holidays around Black Friday, but the highest-performing emails are sent out about four weeks before the holiday itself, according to Gartner. 

Brands need to be nimble when it comes to their marketing plans. “I think the one mistake that retailers can make is they shift forward their entire campaign planning season and they don’t adapt to current conditions,” said Socha. “A lot can happen over the course of the year, so just because retailers are pulling forward doesn’t mean their same creative tactics are going to work. They need to pay attention to the cultural zeitgeist, as well.”

Even though it seems like every retailer nowadays is thinking about seasonal holidays earlier than ever, “the industry as a whole has not shifted forward,” according to Socha. Last year, Gartner found that 65% or brands didn’t post any holiday messaging on Instagram until November or December. “Too many brands are still holding out for traditional holiday time frames to begin marketing, but they shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with pulling up their holiday marketing and abandoning a traditional Black Friday and Cyber Week calendar.”

All told, the traditional retail calendar may not be entirely obsolete, but it’s certainly changing. 

“There will always be a spike around the traditional holidays that will inform general merchandising planning,” said Socha. “But I think retailers do need to account for the fact that there’s a growing number of consumers that shop year-round, and they need to invest in broader gifting hubs or categories across their e-commerce or in-store experiences.”