Halloween who?
As the coffin slams shut on Halloween, Wal-Mart and other retailers are launching their holiday shopping deals almost a month before Black Friday, promising to be cheaper, earlier, easier and faster to cater to the ever more value- and convenience-focused customer.
Wal-Mart on Saturday plans to launch 90-day price rollbacks on more than 20,000 items, double the number of rollbacks it offers on any given day and a greater assortment than last year, the world’s largest retailer announced Friday.
On Monday it will bring back its 24-hour “cyber savers” event, offering 15 online deals normally reserved for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the traditional kickoffs to holiday shopping, such as $348 for a 48-inch Sony LED HDTV, $100 off regular price. For the first time, it will offer same-day store pickup on those deals.
Wal-Mart starting Saturday also plans to offer free shipping on its top 100 gifts, which are labeled on its website. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retail behemoth, which has added more than 1 million items to its site since last year’s holiday season, bringing its product selection to 7 million, will continue its regular policy of offering free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Customers can have any item shipped to a store for free.
Steve Bratspies, executive vice president of general merchandise for Wal-Mart U.S., said he expects the shopping season to be at least as competitive as last year.
“We’re going to lead on price through the holiday season,” he said.
It is in for competition. Minneapolis-based Target last week announced free shipping on all Target.com orders starting immediately through Dec. 20, and noted that 65,000 online items are available for store pickup, most fulfilled within an hour. It also planned to launch a Wish List app Friday that lets users save 10 percent on their wish list on one day of their choosing before Nov. 26.
Members of Target’s Cartwheel coupon app, which has swelled to 11 million users from 3 million last holiday season, will find 50 percent off a different toy every day. And for the third year, Target is extending its price match policy, this time adding three extra days to last from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24.
Wal-Mart, which does price match for printed ads and lets store associates use their discretion for online price matching, said it is considering making online price match a broader policy but has not made any final decisions.
Meanwhile, Amazon on Saturday kicks off its Countdown to Black Friday with two “Deals of the Day” every day through Dec. 22, plus 15,000 limited-time “Lightning Deals.” For the first time, members of Amazon Prime, its membership program, will have 30-minute early access to select deals.
Seattle-based Amazon also has launched a new capability that lets customers add items they discover on Twitter directly to their shopping cart or wish list without leaving their Twitter feed, by adding amazoncart or amazonwishlist to their Twitter reply.
Same-day delivery is another service catching on for the holidays.
Amazon’s same-day service includes a search filter to find items available for same-day delivery and a noon cut-off time for placing orders, seven days a week. The service is available in 12 cities.
Kohl’s is testing Google Express in select delivery areas, allowing shoppers to shop local stores online and get items delivered on the same day or overnight.
Kohl’s, which is based in Menomonee Falls, Wis., also for the first time is giving holiday shoppers the option to buy online and pick up in store at more than 100 locations, a feature that is becoming an industry standard.
Kohl’s, which has suffered several years of flat or declining sales, announced at its investors conference this week that would invest about $4 billion over the next four years to improve technology and in-store experience.
It is putting a lot of stock in its new Yes2You Rewards program, the members of which will find extra savings through the holidays.
Kohl’s also on Thursday announced it will open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, nudging up from 8 p.m. last year. Macy’s earlier this month also announced it pushed up its Thanksgiving hours to 6 p.m. from 8 p.m.
Bridget Weishaar, an analyst at Morningstar, said consumers continue to be very focused on price, as they were last year, and retailers will be heavily promotional as a result. In addition to a fundamental shift in shopping behavior to be value-focused – in part because people still don’t feel confident with their incomes – she said several shopping categories, such as apparel, don’t have must-have items this season enticing consumers to pay top dollar.
“The winners are going to be the ones who gives consumers the best price,” Weishaar said.
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But unlike last year, when stores were left with a lot of excess inventory that they had to heavily discount to get rid of, she said retailers have inventory levels more in check, and she expects them to be more strategic and targeted with their promotions.
Likewise, she expects retailers to be more careful about their shipping policies after carriers were overwhelmed with online purchases last year and many packages didn’t make it to their destinations in time for Christmas.
UPS anticipates a load of more than 585 million packages in December, an 11 percent increase over 2013. On its peak delivery day, Dec. 22, it expects to deliver 34 million packages worldwide, double what it does in an average day.
A survey released this week by the National Retail Federation suggests retailers will be more conservative with their shipping policies to avoid last year’s snafus. A fifth of retailers surveyed plan to set their guaranteed-by-Christmas standard shipping deadlines to expire Dec. 19 or later, less than the quarter that did so last year.
E-commerce continues to take shopping share from bricks and mortars. Fifty-six percent of shoppers say they plan to shop online for the holidays, up from 51.5 percent last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
As the physical and digital shopping worlds continue to blend, Wal-Mart has launched new items to its mobile app, including the Search my Store feature that points customers to the exact nearby store and aisle location where a product is located.
It also has launched a “checkout promise” to open more cash registers during peak shopping times, from noon to 6 p.m. from Nov. 22 to Christmas, to help speed checkout lines. At their peak all 100,000 registers will be open.
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