“Over 80% of retail sales happen during the six-week-period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and consumers are already wondering if they need to stock up.”
What’s in a name? Plenty if you’re North Carolina senator Thom Tillis. Tillis’s new pet peeve: online retailers’ approach to Thanksgiving. Per USA Today:
A North Carolina senator is taking aim at online retailers, warning of a “virtual” post-Thanksgiving shopping holiday taking hold and increasing sales tax revenue for state and local governments… As USA Today reports, Tillis …recently introduced Senate Bill 1744 to outlaw traditional retailers from mailing holiday sales promotions on Nov. 22, the day after Thanksgiving. Tillis said the legislation was a result of a claim that Amazon.com is pushing back on a federal holiday by shifting its holiday promotions to later dates… Tension over the definition of what constitutes a “holiday” has been building for years, with the Democrat-led Congress unable to agree on how to clarify the term or when and how it applies. Last year, the Senate considered a measure introduced by Senator Chuck Schumer to allow states to waive holiday sales tax until Dec. 18. The legislation failed to pass.
Noting that most consumers prefer not to shop on Thanksgiving and traditionally have done so through the year, Tillis said:
“Simply put, Amazon is hiding behind a phony argument so their customers can skip the in-store lines and wait through the holiday sales.”
Also, in a rather bizarre statement, eBay CEO Devin Wenig explained, per CNET:
“As customers embrace digital shopping, we are at an inflection point in retailing that demands more precise insights. It’s critical for retailers to have an end-to-end view of the customer to understand who is shopping from their device and when and with what device, and we offer retailers and their supply chain partners the ability to securely close the loop on data. I’m confident that with the right policy around data collection, organizations like eBay can better fulfill the demands of today’s on-demand shopping customer.”
That obviously presumes that consumers don’t generally shop while they’re waiting in line. Which makes for an extra month of controversy, yet another example of a retailer’s contrarian viewpoints being out of step with the majority of consumers, about what’s hot and what’s not.