Consumers Embrace Early Christmas

Apparently Christmas Creep is getting less creepy. That’s the conclusion of a new study that shows U.S. consumers are less annoyed by early holiday promotions. To be clear, most are still annoyed, just less so according to a survey by RichRelevance. More than half of those surveyed (55%) said they were annoyed or very annoyed by stores that open on Thanksgiving and 63% felt the same about holiday goods appearing in stores before Halloween. That’s down from 71% in 2014. And shoppers are responding to early promotions. Some 34 million people have already started their holiday shopping according to CreditCards.com and close to one million are already done. So for all the bellyaching and threatening of boycotts, Christmas Creep is actually getting shoppers to open their wallets. But it’s also true that retailers that don’t embrace early promotions can benefit, too. Read more at Forbes.