Deloitte's annual holiday shopping survey found that 22% of respondents plan to start their holiday shopping earlier than last year, and that 28% of shoppers' budgets are expected to be exhausted by the end of October, the highest level reported. Put together, the two figures describe a season that is no longer a sprint but a marathon, and a supply chain that has to be provisioned for demand arriving weeks before the calendar says it should.
The Value Seeker Is Now the Majority Signal
Deloitte has isolated a segment it calls the holiday value seeker, and 38% of respondents fall into it. Brian McCarthy, a principal in Deloitte's strategy and analytics practice, said being a value seeker does not mean these shoppers are not looking to spend: they planned to spend 12% more this holiday season compared with non-value seekers. Deloitte found 38% of respondents are holiday value seekers
They just do more research and are willing to make more trade-offs. McCarthy described them as knowing how to use loyalty programs and rewards, and being willing to shift between national brand and private label to get more value. That combination is unusually demanding for retailers, because it rewards assortment breadth and price transparency at the same time.
Why an Early Season Breaks Standard Restocking
Sixty-five percent of these value seekers are already shopping during October, but their engagement is also more likely to hold through the full Thanksgiving promotional week. That means the same shopper appears twice: once in an early research-and-reserve phase, and again during the peak window, with a different basket composition each time. 65% of value seekers are already shopping during October
Standard restocking assumes a single demand peak and builds inventory toward it. When 28% of budget is spent before November, the peak flattens and widens, and a plan built on the old curve will be short in October and long in December. The cost of that mismatch shows up as expedited freight on one end and markdowns on the other.
Three Planning Assumptions Worth Revisiting
Assortment readiness date
Retailers have historically treated the first week of November as the point where the full holiday assortment must be on shelf. McCarthy is careful to note this is not necessarily required, since certain big-ticket purchases such as televisions may still be pulled forward only when a deal appears. The nuance matters: full assortment early is expensive, but a curated early set is not.
Depth versus breadth of inventory
An early, research-heavy shopper buys differently from a peak-window impulse shopper. The first group buys fewer, more considered items and is more sensitive to availability of a specific model. Depth on a narrow set of known items serves them better than breadth across categories.
Loyalty data as a forecast input
Value seekers use loyalty programs deliberately, which means their behavior leaves a readable trace weeks before the transaction. Treating loyalty engagement as a leading indicator rather than a retention metric changes how early a restocking decision can be made, and how confident that decision is.
The Finite-Spend Constraint
McCarthy's most useful caution is that there is still, to a degree, a finite amount of spend that will happen during the holiday season. Early shopping does not create new demand, it only moves it. For a retailer, that means an October gain is frequently a December loss, and the two are rarely measured on the same scorecard. McCarthy said there is still a finite amount of holiday spend
This is where category-level tracking earns its keep. A retailer that sees October unit growth without checking December comparables may conclude the season is strong when it has simply pulled demand forward. The distinction only becomes visible when the same item is tracked across both windows rather than aggregated into a quarterly total.
Reading the Season Before It Closes
The practical question for merchants is what to do differently in the next four weeks. The answer starts with separating research traffic from buying traffic, since an early visit that does not convert is not a failure if it is followed by a later one. Measuring the interval between first visit and purchase is more useful than counting either alone.
The second step is aligning replenishment with the observed curve rather than the historical one. That requires weekly visibility into sell-through by item, not monthly visibility by category, and it requires the supply and merchandising teams to read the same numbers. Without that, the early season is simply a longer period of guessing. Kohls is leaning into clearer pricing gift bundles and delivery partnerships
