When consumers grumble about “Christmas creep,” they’re usually referring to how the once-contained holiday shopping season has started to sneak its way earlier and earlier into November — and, sometimes, even October. However annoying a premature commercial or radio jingle may be for the shoppers, it’s arguable that retailers are under far more pressure to generate sales outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
And try they do. The second Monday of December has become yet another unofficial official shopping holiday known as Green Monday. Throw away the environmental angles, though, because since eBay coined the name after noticing a spike in sales on this date in 2011, retailers have turned it into a last-gasp opportunity to boost traffic ahead of the rush of chronic procrastinators who hit the malls hours before Christmas Eve.
In an unexpected twist, though, the growing diffusion of holiday shopping events has had the unintended effect of retailers bidding against their competitors — and, sometimes, even against themselves.
Look no further than Forbes‘ breakdown of Walmart’s online product listing on Green Monday. Despite offering items like a Playstation 4 500GB bundle for $349 on Black Friday, shoppers could snag the exact same console package for $299 during Green Monday. The megastore chain also reduced the price of a bridal ring set — normally retailing above $1,000 — from the modest $598 the day after Thanksgiving to the pocket change of $398 on Green Monday.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there are sales of this degree, it’s a near certainty in retail that crowds will follow. While the long-term effects on the bottomline of bowing so low to guarantee a sale aren’t yet known, Jaeme Laczkowski, a spokesperson for Walmart, told Forbes that bending over backwards on Green Monday captures the eye of a particular kind of shopper.
“This season, over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, mobile made up more than 70 percent of traffic to Walmart.com, and nearly half of orders since Thanksgiving were placed on a mobile device — that’s double compared to last year,” Laczkowski said. “Our customers went from previously mostly searching and browsing on mobile to making purchases at a much higher rate. And that trend continues with Green Monday, where we’[v]e seen a massive shift to mobile. Walmart’s mobile traffic has more than tripled from Green Monday 2012 to Green Monday 2014.”
While retail pundits have long hailed the advent of mobile as a coup de grâce for marketers’ battle against consumer apathy, Green Monday 2015 is ushering in a new kind of paradigm during the last days leading up to Christmas. Instead of rushing out on discreet days to snag whatever deals are available, shoppers now know that they can get the best deal, wherever and whenever they are, at the tap of a finger. And rather than jump at the earliest opportunity, more and more shoppers are showing that they’re willing to wait retailers out for a low-priced game of pricing brinkmanship.
If this is surprising experts now, it’s no shock to retailers themselves. In November, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren told CNBC that discounts, promotions and deals would be the highlight of the 2015 holiday shopping season, and in more ways than one, it would be shoppers who would wield all the power at the bargaining table.
“We’re going to take markdowns,” Lundgren said. “Consumers are going to have a field day, because we’re going to have lots of values out there. But we’re going to get rid of the inventory — have to do that before Christmas. Eventually, you run out of days to sell through the inventory, because Dec. 27 comes and volume just drops off precipitously.”
There are still a handful more days for risk-taking shoppers to see if the price on that big ticket item will inch further and further down, and the more customers willing to wait could mean that retailers have no choice but to grin and bear it.