Big-Box Briefing: What to watch this holiday season as Target, Walmart and more battle for sales
Within the past week, nearly all the major brick-and-mortar retailers — Target, Walmart, Kohl’s, Best Buy and Macy’s, to name a few— have put out press releases trumpeting their holiday offers. We summarized the key points to watch from them.
This week's Big-Box Briefing covers the holiday sales strategies of major retailers including Target, Walmart, Kohl's, Best Buy, and Macy's. These retailers have recently announced their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as well as shared sneak peeks of their holiday advertising campaigns. Many of the strategies have been growing in popularity over the past few years, with retailers extending their Cyber Week sales by a day or two and hosting early Black Friday deals.
One difference this year is the added pressure from inflation and uncertain consumer sentiment, which could affect spending.
Michael Brown, a consultant and partner at Kearney, predicts that the holiday season will be a challenging one with many unknowns, as consumers' budgets may be exhausted early by sales or they may cut back on spending due to rising gas prices. Retailers are focusing on value, with Target announcing price reductions on nearly 2,000 home and apparel products and Kohl's offering nearly 2,000 beauty items under $30.
Price point is becoming increasingly important to shoppers with high fixed costs and low wages, particularly with high fuel costs.
Retailers are also expanding into new categories to win a larger share of the customer's wallet, such as Lowe's positioning its products as ideal for gift-giving and Target launching a Harry Potter-inspired collection of exclusive products. Additionally, AI shopping assistants are becoming more prevalent, with Target, Walmart, and Lowe's launching their own AI assistants to help shoppers with gifting ideas.
The impact of these tools on holiday sales remains to be seen, but it is likely that the industry will not fully understand their popularity until retailers report their fourth-quarter earnings in early 2027.
Written by urgent.news from Modern Retail's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
