Retailers Are Wearing Us Down: Shoppers Don’t Mind Holiday Creep So Much

Holiday Creep, and more specifically Christmas Creep, are common annoyances of modern shopping. When the school supplies disappear from shelves, the Christmas trees and lights appear, making shoppers feel like the holiday season begins earlier and earlier every year. This is becoming more normal, though: some recent survey results show that fewer Americans find Christmas Creep less annoying than in previous years. They’re wearing us down.

RichRelevance, a company that provides “omnichannel personalization” for retailers, surveyed consumers about their holiday shopping preferences. Two years ago, the first time that the company did this survey, 71% of shoppers declared themselves to be “annoyed” or “very annoyed” when Christmas merchandise appears on shelves before the end of October. in this year’s survey, only 63% said the same thing.

The difference is also generational: younger adults, who have grown up expecting to be able to buy a Christmas tree around Labor Day, have less of a problem with the idea and the reality of Christmas Creep.

Retailers are also wearing on us with the Black Thursday phenomenon, with fewer people saying that stores that open on Thanksgiving Day annoy them this year (55%) compared to 2014 (65%).

RichRelevance is a company that sells its services to retailers, though, and the key insight they were pushing with this survey was how companies can generate a lot of goodwill by simply keeping humane hours on Black Friday and refusing to open on Thanksgiving Day.

REI, for example, gained a lot of good publicity by refusing to open on Black Friday in 2015, instead encouraging employees and shoppers to go play outside.

Over half of people who took part in the survey said that closing on Thanksgiving made them more likely to shop with retailer that made that decision, and 73% said that they liked retailers that closed on Thanksgiving and even Black Friday more.

RichRelevance Releases 3rd Annual Survey on Holiday Shopping Attitudes & Preferences [RichRelevance] (via Chain Store Age)