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The
two-day "Prime Early Access Sale" shopping event for Amazon
members, which starts Tuesday, is much like the Prime Day summer
marketing blitz and will compete with early discounts from rival
retailers.
"Retailers will likely fight harder and earlier for potentially
fewer dollars this year. The thinking is that the early bird
catches the dollars," said Carol Spieckerman, president at
consultancy Spieckerman Retail.
Walmart Inc is holding a "Rollbacks and More" sale event from
Oct. 10-13 to counter Amazon's discount days, with deals on
everything from Hot Wheels toys to luggage.
Kohl's Corp and Best Buy Co Inc's 48-hour sale also runs on the
same days as Amazon's event, while Target Corp's "Deal Days"
were from Oct. 6-8, avoiding a clash with Amazon.
"The middle- to upper-income consumer is likely to take more
advantage of the current deals to get a jump on the holiday
season ... at the lower end of the income spectrum, those
consumers may hold off and buy closer to need," Telsey Advisory
Group analyst Joseph Feldman said.
Inflation and early discounting is also expected to slow holiday
spending for the year. U.S. online holiday sales are expected to
rise this year at their slowest pace since at least 2015 and
grow only 2.5% to $209.7 billion, according to Adobe Analytics.
The early start to the holiday shopping season, however, does
not come as a surprise.
Major retailers such as Target and Walmart have been giving big
discounts for months to get rid of excess inventory that piled
up as consumer's cut back on discretionary spending. Some of
them even had competing deals when Amazon held its Prime Day
sales in July.
At the time, Amazon raked in about $12 billion in sales,
according to Adobe.
"This holiday season, retailers are resorting to blunt force
promotions to coax shoppers," Spieckerman said.
(Additional reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by
Shounak Dasgupta)
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