Holiday 2019: Retailers Confront the Changing Dynamics

A special kind of holiday season has arrived. One likely to yield healthy sales gains — roughly 4 percent — but as promotional as ever, filled with uncertainty over how profits play out, greater mobile shopping, retailers enticing consumers to buy limited supplies of the hottest items, and Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals occurring well before and after the actual days. This holiday season is the shortest since 2013, with only 26 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and six fewer days than last year. That has motivated retailers to unleash holiday promotions as far ahead as Halloween in some cases. The late Hanukkah this year — the first night is Dec. 22, whereas last year it was Dec. 2 — doesn’t help. Among the big players promoting early is Amazon, which is largely expected to have a winning holiday season. Amazon last Friday began rolling out thousands of Black Friday deals and “deeper discounts” on an avalanche of  products daily, including toys, electronics, beauty, kitchen, home, Amazon devices and some fashion, such as 35 percent off Herschel backpacks and wallets, 50 percent off Oakley and Ray-Ban sunglasses, and 30 percent off Calvin Klein underwear. Bed Bath & Beyond had Keurig coffee

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