Since many retailers moved up their back-to-school specials to July, I keep thinking the children are going back to school any day now. Yesterday, I finally stepped out to get going on the school shopping because I felt like I was running out of time. There have been flyers in the paper for weeks now advertising special discounts and so far I had failed to take advantage. Today, I checked the calendar and our school district does not open for another 4 weeks thanks to a late Labor Day holiday. So here I am thinking I have to rush for nothing.
These days, in an attempt to chase sales, retailers are pushing the calendar out of whack putting us all under pressure to shop months ahead of our usual timing. Many are experimenting with beginning Christmas sales in August. Halloween stuff is out in many stores already. Now we are supposed to shop for back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas at the same time. Hello retailers, we can only focus on one shopping season at a time. Throwing all the stuff out there months and months ahead of time believing that we will shop earlier for everything is just confusing all of us, well me. What was wrong with thinking about Christmas/holiday shopping after Halloween?
Well, as the dismal July retail sales reports are revealing, consumers are still in economic shock and they are not buying, no matter how many enticing discounts have been flung at them and I don't think that will change anytime soon. So, instead of rushing us in to buy everything that we would have bought through the end of the year by next week, retailers ought to adjust to the cold hard reality that the consumer is out of dough. Unfortunately, it is too late to change the fact that we are in for a very, very long Christmas/holiday shopping season this year. Egads!
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