Holiday shopping keeps starting earlier and earlier, but it’s unclear if it increases overall sales.

We were only a few weeks past the Fourth of July this year when CVS decided to roll out its Halloween candy displays.

This kind of premature holiday marketing can be disorienting, and even a little angersome, to consumers. Back-to-school marketing seems to start just as summer begins, shaking parents and children out of their respite from their busy school year schedules. Halloween marketing starts in summer, reminding consumers of the tragic, fleeting nature of warm weather bliss. Halloween isn’t even over before the holiday shopping begins, heralding the end of the year before we’ve even finished spooky season.

It raises the question of whether these seasonally premature marketing campaigns actually work.

The answer: yes and no.

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Shopping does start earlier

Consumers are indeed buying seasonal items earlier and earlier in the year. So early, in fact, that holiday-centric consumption periods are no longer so distinct. Rather, the entire second half of the calendar year blends together into one non-stop consumer frenzy.

Take, for instance, back-to-school shopping, which starts in late June, less than a month into summer for most students, and picks up in late July through August, according to data collected by Attain.

Halloween is also subject to holiday creep, according to a separate Attain report on Halloween shopping trends. More than 40% of Halloween shoppers plan to start purchasing Halloween items before October.

Then there is, of course, the end-of-year holiday shopping season fueled by Christmas and Chanukah (and to a lesser extent, Thanksgiving). Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, used to be the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season, with big box retailers hosting doorbuster sales for people willing to wake up early after a day after over-indulging on turkey and stuffing. Then the stores start opening at midnight on Black Friday. Then stores dropped any pretense of encroaching on the Thanksgiving holiday and started staying open and offering deals during people’s family feasts, before eventually starting their black Friday deals in the weeks before the holiday. 

Now, thanks to Amazon, the holiday shopping season starts in October. The ecommerce giant’s annual fall Prime Day sale marks the unofficial start to holiday shopping, and the big box retailers are following suit. Target’s Circle Week sale starts October 6 this year and Walmart’s Holiday Deals event starts October 8. Half of all holiday shoppers last year started shopping in October, according to a survey from McKinsey. In 2022, it was even higher, at 56 percent.

The early start to the holiday shopping is reflected in shipping trends. Inbound traffic at major shipping ports in the U.S. this summer reached their highest levels since 2022, partially in anticipation of an early holiday shopping season, according to a report released by the National Retail Federation. 

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Shoppers aren’t necessarily spending more, though

It’s unclear whether holiday creep actually increases overall sales or simply spreads out sales over a longer period of time, however.

“Amazon has been running an October sales event since 2020 and lots of retailers match it,” says Jason Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis. “Everyone is in an arms race to capture the first wave of holiday spending, but if you look at the historical trends, October sales have been very consistent over the past four years.”

Goldberg analyzed Department of Commerce’s core retail data and found that spending in October was flat from 2019 to 2023 despite retailers try to induce shoppers to spend more earlier.

Andrew Lipsman, an independent retail and marketing analyst at his firm Media, Ads + Commerce, is similarly skeptical of holiday creep marketing efforts. “October holiday shopping is a byproduct of Amazon Prime Deal Days, where people will take advantage of deals to get some early shopping done,” Lipsman says. “I haven’t seen much evidence to suggest it’s driving much incremental shopping, though.”

Whenever they buy, shoppers are expected to spend a lot this holiday season. The NRF is expecting sales to be as much as 3.5 percent higher from last year, even as economic concerns persist.