Raphael Stevens

“Halloween Kills” generated an estimated $50.35 million in ticket sales during its domestic debut over the weekend, despite also being made available on Universal’s streaming platform Peacock.
The film had the highest opening for a horror movie during the pandemic and the highest horror movie opening since “It: Chapter 2” was released in September 2019.
Notably, more than 60% of audiences were aged 18 to 34, a key demographic in the movie industry, and the film saw a nearly even spread between male and female ticket buyers.

Still from Universal and Blumhouse’s “Halloween Kills.”

Audiences flocked to theaters over the weekend to see Universal and Blumhouse’s latest horror flick “Halloween Kills.”
The sequel to 2018’s “Halloween” generated an estimated $50.35 million in ticket sales during its domestic debut despite also being made available on Universal’s streaming platform Peacock over the weekend.

“Halloween Kills” had the highest opening for a horror movie during the pandemic and the highest horror movie opening since “It: Chapter 2” was released in September 2019.
“The results we had this weekend are just further proof that audiences want to be in theaters,” said Jim Orr, president of domestic theatrical distribution at Universal Pictures. “There’s something about this franchise and this genre that makes the communal experience of being in theaters just that much more exciting.”
The film tallied $22.8 million on Friday, including Thursday previews, $17.2 million Saturday and is expected to haul in an additional $10.3 million Sunday.
Notably, more than 60% of audiences were aged 18 to 34, a key demographic in the movie industry, and the film saw a nearly even spread between male and female ticket buyers.
“The massive debut this weekend for ‘Halloween Kills’ offers further evidence of the power of the escapist thrills and entertainment value of good scare to generate stronger than expected movie theater revenue and all this despite the film’s availability at home,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is the distributor of “Halloween Kills.”

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CEO compensation is being linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics across a wide range of companies, from Apple to Caterpillar, which just announced a new ESG plan for pay last week.
The oil and gas sector, at the center of climate change and market risk, is also linking its executive pay to carbon targets.
Royal Dutch Shell was among the first Big Oil companies to link pay such as bonuses to fossil fuel reduction targets, but more energy peers are following.

A Shell employee walks past the company’s new Quest Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada, October 7, 2021.
Todd Korol | Reuters

As energy sector demand roars back and commodities market pundits talk about the return of $100 oil, there are new factors in the energy sector pushing producers to extract less — from greater fiscal discipline in the U.S. shale after a decade-long bust to ESG pressure and the ways in which energy executives are being paid by shareholders.
In 2018, Royal Dutch Shell became the first oil major to link ESG to executive pay, earmarking 10% of long-term incentive plans (LTIP) to reducing carbon emissions. BP followed suit, using ESG measures in both its annual bonus and its LTIP. While the European majors were first, Chevron and Marathon Oil are among the U.S. -based oil companies that have added greenhouse gas emissions targets to executive compensation plans.

The oil and gas companies are joining dozens of public corporations across all sectors — including Apple, Clorox, PepsiCo and Starbucks — that tie ESG to executive pay. Last week, industrial Caterpillar created the position of chief sustainability & strategy officer last and said it will now tie a portion of executive compensation to ESG.
As of last year, 51% of S&P 500 companies used some form of ESG metrics in their executive compensation plans, according to a report from Willis Towers Watson. Half of companies include ESG in annual bonus or incentive plans, while only 4% use it in long-term incentive plans (LTIP). A similar report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that 45% of FTSE 100 firms had an ESG target in the annual bonus, LTIP or both.
“We will continue to see the percentage of companies [linking ESG to pay] increase,” said Ken Kuk, senior director of talent and rewards at Willis Towers Watson. And although right now more than 95% of instances of ESG metrics are in annual bonuses, “there is a shift more toward long-term incentives,” he said.
A related survey by the firm last year, of board members and senior executives, revealed that nearly four in five respondents (78%) are planning to change how they use ESG with their executive incentive plans over the next three years. This reflects the current purpose-over-profit debate in the corporate world, with the environment ranking as the top priority.

Pressuring the fossil fuel industry

In 2020, petroleum accounted for about a third of U.S. energy consumption, but was the source of 45% of the total energy-related CO2 emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Natural gas also provided about a third of the nation’s energy and produced 36% of CO2 emissions. Oil and gas companies have largely abandoned coal, which accounted for about 10% of energy use and accounted for nearly 19% of emissions.

Investors are increasingly focused on ESG, and more have been pressuring the fossil fuel industry to shrink its global carbon footprint and the associated risks to operations and bottom lines. “The increase in momentum that the investment community has put around ESG is driving the discussion into climate [change],” said Phillippa O’Connor, a London-based partner at PwC and a specialist in executive pay. “We can’t underestimate the impact that investors will continue to have for the next couple of years.”
Investor input played a decisive role in Shell’s seminal decision, as well as those at competitors that followed suit. And while executive compensation wasn’t high on the docket at Exxon Mobil’s shareholder meeting last spring, the industry was gobsmacked when the climate-activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 won three seats on its board of directors. The coup, as it was roundly described, may ultimately deemphasize Exxon’s reliance on carbon-based businesses and move it more toward investments in solar, wind and other renewable energy sources — and in the process lead to ESG-linked pay packages.
“We look forward to working with all of our directors to build on the progress we’ve made to grow long-term shareholder value and succeed in a lower-carbon future,” Exxon chairman and CEO Darren Woods said in a statement shortly after the proxy vote.

Meanwhile, financial regulators also are eyeing climate change as a factor for investors to consider. The Securities and Exchange Commission has indicated that ESG disclosure regulation will be a central focus under new Chair Gary Gensler, from climate to other ESG factors such as labor conditions.
There’s nothing novel about incentivizing corporate leaders to hit predetermined targets, particularly for increasing revenue, profits and shareholder returns by certain increments. Oil and gas companies, because of their hazardous extraction operations — from underground fracking wells to offshore drilling rigs — have for years established incentives for improving workplace safety.
Following the Enron accounting and fraud scandal in 2001, meeting new governance mandates (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) was the basis for rewards. Then came added remuneration for achieving internal goals set for quality, health and wellness, recycling, energy conservation and community service — wrapped into corporate social responsibility. Sustainability then became the catch-all for establishing executive performance metrics around environmental stewardship, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace and ethical business practices — all of which now reside under the ESG umbrella.

ESG is tricky, and existing carbon targets have critics

Although the trend is expected to continue, experts warn that the process can be tricky, and targets designed by oil and gas companies to combat climate already have critics.
Including emission-reduction targets in executive pay packages may compel oil and gas companies to walk their public-relations talk about being good corporate citizens. Yet the methodology can be challenging. “It’s not the what, but the how,” said Christyan Malek, an industry analyst at JP Morgan. For example, a company can state how much is has lowered its global carbon emissions in a given year. “But that’s very limited,” he said, “because they’re not disclosing their emissions by region,” which can widely vary from one location to the next. “When it comes to carbon intensity, it’s in the [overall] portfolio.”
Or a company can ply in greenwashing through carbon offsets. “I have massive emissions, so I’ll [plant] a bunch of forests, and that way I neutralize myself,” Malek said — while the company is still producing the same amount of emissions. “You’re disclosing in a way that’s better optically than it is in reality. Disclosure has to work hand in hand with compensation.”
The optics of oil and gas companies paying well for doing good might help the industry’s image among a general public increasingly concerned about the calamitous impacts of human-induced climate change, exacerbated by the latest, and most dire, related U.N. report and a string of deadly floods, hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires. But experts focused on climate and the energy sector note that sector targets often don’t go far enough, related to reducing intensity of fossil fuel operations, not underlying production of fossil fuels, and dealing only with Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, not the Scope 3 emissions which are the largest share of the climate problem.
O’Connor said that companies should be careful how they align ESG metrics with incentives. “ESG is a broad and complex set of metrics and expectations,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing a number of companies use multiple metrics rather than a single measure, to get a better balance of considerations and perspectives across the ESG forum. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy in this, and there’s a danger in trying to move too quickly and revert to some kind of standard.”
The pandemic placed an unexpected hard top on compensation incentives in 2020, and with the global economy decimated last year, Shell’s remuneration board decided to forego bonuses for CEO Ben van Beurden, CFO Jessica Uhl and other top executives, and there was no direct link in their LTIPs to delivery of energy transition targets.
The energy sector has roared back this year amid strong global economic growth and demand for oil and gas amid lower supply has led to a spike in prices. That could incentivize oil and gas companies to produce more, but at the same time, compensation to to energy transition targets ae going up. At Shell, the 2021 annual bonus is targeted at 120% of base salary for the CEO and CFO, which remain the same as set in 2020, at $1,842,530 and $1,200,900, respectively. Within this, though, progress in energy transition is now up from 10% to 15% of the total amount that can be awarded. In addition, energy transition is part of the LTIP which vests three years in the future, based on Shell’s 2020 annual report.

Arrows pointing outwards

Oil prices have rebounded sharply amid limited supply and demand growth out of the worst of the pandemic, but more oil and gas companies are tying near- and long-term executive pay to energy transition targets, led by Royal Dutch Shell.

According to a 2019 McKinsey study, there is growing evidence that adopting ESG is not just a feel-good fad, but that when done right creates value. And that may be enough to convince more oil and gas companies to link it to compensation, especially because it’s one of the few industries where ESG is existential, Kuk said. “Sometimes we think about ESG in the context of doing good, and it is doing good. But I still believe there has to be a business reason for everything. And it’s only when you have a business reason that ESG will prevail.”
The deleterious role that carbon emissions play in climate change will continue to put pressure on oil and gas companies to embrace the International Energy Agency’s goal of achieving net-zero by 2050. Beyond complying with regulatory mandates, though, linking reduction targets to executives’ compensation may be a critical driver in affecting change.  More

Levi’s has introduced a new store model that allows customers to use its app to shop and have both curbside pick-ups and contactless returns.
Estee Lauder, which saw 40% of its North American beauty sales take place online, has looked to blend the virtual and in-person experiences.
Wall Street investors are targeting retailer e-commerce growth, with Saks Fifth Avenue splitting its online sales from its store business, and last week, activist investor Jana Partners advising Macy’s to make a similar move.

A Levi’s logo on the window of a Levi Strauss & Co. store in London.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shoppers are doing more and more purchasing online amid the pandemic, and that has both companies and investors trying to best mix e-commerce and the traditional retail store business moving forward.
In 2008, e-commerce sales made up just 3.6% of total retail sales in the U.S., according to data from eMarketer.

Amazon saw its business grow tenfold in the 2010s, Walmart further established its online platform, new entrants like Wayfair emerged and almost every retail brand ensured it had a digital presence, as e-commerce boomed. By 2020, online sales made up 14% of total retail sales.
The Covid-19 pandemic sped that growth up even more, with e-commerce sales now expected to make up 15.3% of total retail sales by the end of this year, according to eMarketer. That is not expected to slow down — that figure is predicted to increase to 23.5% of total sales by 2025.
“The consumer wants a seamless experience. He or she wants to be able to interact with us in our stores as well as on our website and so building an omnichannel experience has been critical during the pandemic,” Harmit Singh, CFO of Levi Strauss & Co., said at the recent CNBC @Work Summit.

Blending in-store and online shopping experiences

Levi Strauss & Co., which operates approximately 3,000 stores and shop-in-shops in addition to selling its products online and in other department stores and retailers, has focused on scaling up its investments in its digital experience while also keeping a priority on what a customer experiences shopping in person.
In Levi’s 2020 fiscal year, nearly a fourth of its sales came via online shopping, whether directly through Levi’s platform or through the digital presence of its wholesalers. In 2015, online sales made up less than 10% of its business.

Last year, Levi’s introduced a new experiential store in Palo Alto, California, as part of its push towards more direct-to-consumer sales and less wholesale. There are several digitally-focused features of the “NextGen” store, including integration with the company’s app, curbside pick-ups and contactless returns, and an inventory assortment that is driven by local customer data.
Singh said that the company opened 100 new stores last year and has plans to open more than 100 this year. Some of those stores will be the new experiential ones, the company previously announced.
“We scaled up our investments in driving more of a digital experience,” Singh said. “We were able to test things and scale things at speeds we would have not said was possible pre the pandemic, and I think it’s really helped companies like ours because I think we’ve been able to get a lot more agile and been able to deliver the promise that we’ve set out to our consumers.”

The balance between the in-store and online experience during the pandemic also has led to changes in the way Levi Strauss thinks about its distribution infrastructure, which has grown in importance amid supply chain challenges.
Singh said that the omnichannel strategy on the consumer-facing side of the business led the company to take a look at legacy distribution centers — some that were only fulfilling products for wholesale customers, while other distribution centers were servicing the needs of e-commerce consumers. It recreated the omnichannel approach for its West Coast distribution after it began the ship-from-store strategy, and he said it leads to inventory efficiencies and a low cost of service.
“I think things like that will make a big difference. Now we’re scaling our ship-from-store around the world and we’re setting up more omnichannel distribution centers in Europe and other parts,” Singh said.
Estee Lauder has also pushed to make the online and in-store experience more seamless, adding things like virtual try-on and having its beauty advisors available online, Tracey Travis, CFO of The Estee Lauder Companies, said at the CNBC event.
“Our in-store experiences is so strong; it’s fundamentally where the company has been focused for many, many years,” she said. “Making sure that we’re investing in online and having as much of a high touch experience online as we do offline was critically important to make that consumer experience more seamless between online and offline.”

Deepening the online sales focus

“One of the things that certainly has happened during this pandemic is we’ve seen an acceleration, probably [a] three- to five-year acceleration, in terms of our online business across all forms,” Travis said.
“Brick and mortar is still a very, very important part” of Estee Lauder, but she noted how the pandemic shifted some of the company’s strategy.
“During the last 12 months, the priority has been very much online and adding capability to our online channel, and at the same time, trying to assess how brick and mortar would recover, where brick and mortar would recover, and where we should be investing and where we should be disinvesting,” she said.
Estee Lauder, which owns brands like Clinique, Mac, Origins, and its eponymous beauty line, said that 28% of its $16.22 billion in net global sales in its fiscal 2021 year came from online channels, according to its earnings report. In North America specifically, online sales made up 40% of Estee Lauder’s total business, according to company filings.
While online sales for Estee Lauder have more than doubled compared to 2019, physical retail is still a key component of the company’s business. Twenty-one percent of its global sales in its most recent fiscal year took place in department stores, while sales in travel retail environments, such as duty-free shops in airports, made up 28% of its total sales.

Arrows pointing outwards

The future for e-commerce and retail

How the balance between e-commerce and traditional brick-and-mortar sales continues to evolve will be an important question that retail companies ask themselves as more shopping shifts online.
Earlier this year, the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue split apart the luxury retailer’s website into a separate business apart from its 40 stores. In the move, it said the new digital company would be valued at $2 billion, or roughly double its annual sales.
Last week, activist investor Jana Partners took a stake in Macy’s and sent a letter to the company’s board calling for a similar move. Jana had previously said that Macy’s online business could be worth about $14 billion, almost double the company’s current market cap.
Macy’s e-commerce sales have nearly doubled in the last four years, and the company forecasted 2021 sales to be between $8.35 billion and $8.45 billion.
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On Saturday The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced a new three-year contract.
The deal comes less than a day before IATSE’s strike deadline.
This strike would have been the first in the union’s 128-year history and the first major crew strike since World War II.

General view of the Hollywood Sign on November 17, 2020 in Hollywood, California.
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin | GC Images | Getty Images

A deal has been struck between Hollywood’s studios and a union representing its film and television crews that would avert a historic strike that has threatened to shut down production across the industry.
On Saturday, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced a new three-year contract that addresses IATSE’s calls for better working hours, safer workplace conditions and improved benefits.

The new contract includes a 10-hour turnaround between shifts, 54 hours of rest over the weekend, increased health and pension plan funding and a 3% rate increase every year for the duration of the contract.
“Everything achieved was because you, the members, stood up and gave us the power to change the course of these negotiations,” IATSE’s leadership wrote in a memo to union members Saturday. “Our solidarity, at both the leadership and rank and file level, was the primary reason that no local was left behind and every priority was addressed.”
The deal must still be ratified by the union’s membership. IATSE is currently working out how the ratification process can be done electronically, according to the memo obtained by NBC News.
It comes less than a day before IATSE’s strike deadline. This strike would have been the first in the union’s 128-year history and the first major crew strike since World War II.
After talks stalled over the summer, IATSE’s membership voted to approve a strike if a deal could not be reached with producers. The union said 90% of eligible voters cast ballots, with more than 98% in support of strike authorization.

Their demands came on the heels of one of the most tumultuous times in the industry, as productions worked through a global pandemic to ensure studios had content to deliver to consumers.
IATSE represents a wide swath of industry workers, from studio mechanics to wardrobe and make-up artists. In total, it acts on behalf of 150,000 crew members in the U.S. and Canada. Around 60,000 of those are covered by the current TV and film contracts being renegotiated.
An industry-wide strike would have essentially stopped Hollywood production across the country in its tracks, similar to what the writer’s strike did 14 years ago. That strike, between 2007 and 2008, led many shows to shorten or postpone new seasons and led to the cancellation of others.

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Disgraced New York real estate heir Robert Durst has contracted Covid-19 and is currently on a ventilator, his attorney told NBC News.
The diagnosis comes just two days after Durst, 78, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a close friend more than two decades ago.
Jurors convicted Durst last month in the death of Susan Berman, who was shot in the back of her head in her home on Dec. 23, 2000.

Robert Durst looks at jurors as he appears in an Inglewood courtroom with his attorneys for the first closing arguments presented by the prosecution in the murder trial of the New York real estate scion who is charged with the longtime friend Susan Bermans killing in Benedict Canyon just before Christmas Eve 2000. Inglewood Courthouse on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021 in Inglewood, CA.
Al Seib | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

Disgraced New York real estate heir Robert Durst has contracted Covid-19 and is currently on a ventilator, his attorney told NBC News.
“All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator,” Dick DeGuerin told the outlet. “He looked awful Thursday, worst I’ve ever seen him. He was having difficulty breathing, he was having difficulty speaking.”

The diagnosis comes just two days after Durst, 78, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a close friend more than two decades ago. Jurors convicted Durst last month in the death of Susan Berman, who was shot in the back of her head in her home on Dec. 23, 2000.
Prosecutors said that Berman was supposed to speak with police about a fake alibi she allegedly gave the real estate heir following his wife’s 1982 disappearance. (Kathie Durst has never been found and was presumed dead.)
Durst then went into hiding in Galveston, Texas, where he disguised himself as a woman named Dorothy Ciner, NBC News reported.
Durst also later killed and dismembered his neighbor, Morris Black, in September 2001 in Texas, but he was acquitted in court on self-defense claims.
However, the spotlight on Durst was brought back following a 2015 HBO Series, “The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst,” where he appeared to confess to the murders.

A microphone that Durst was wearing recording him in the bathroom whispering to himself: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Durst was arrested in New Orleans in 2015.

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Supply chain shortages threaten holiday inventory levels.
Retailers including Amazon and Target are promoting historically early holiday deals.
Consumer anxiety is leading to more shopping, but not necessarily for gifts, and that could mean shoppers are “going to be mad come December,” said one retail consultant.

Stephen Chernin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Supply chain bottlenecks and rising prices aren’t keeping consumers from buying. The latest retail sales numbers show U.S. consumers are spending at a much faster pace than expected, excluding autos, up over 15% in September. Back-to-school and back-to-work trends drove a higher level of transactions despite the headwinds of inventory shortages and inflation, but what about early holiday shopping?
With widespread supply chain warnings, retailers including Amazon and Target started to offer holiday promotions even earlier than normal to get ahead of the lack of inventory and to ease consumer anxiety. That may yet lead to an accelerated timeline for holiday gift buying.

NPD Group said in its annual holiday shopping outlook that 51% of respondents to a survey said they plan to start holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, but that is only up slightly from last year. The early shopping trend is not new in retail. Major retailers had Thanksgiving Day store openings as far back as 2014 and Amazon’s Prime Day moved to October last year amid the pandemic.
This holiday season “continues the early shopping trend, with the added layer of inventory concerns motivating many shoppers to grab what they want when they see it, instead of waiting for better deals later in the season,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry advisor for NPD, in its annual outlook.

A selfish shopper is leading sales

But if economic anxiety related to the supply chain and inflation is motivating consumers right now, it may be less about the holidays than their own needs and daily lives. Data collected by Kearney Consumer Institute last year found that holiday shoppers largely held back, with 81% of respondents to a survey it conducted about Amazon Prime Day saying they waited on major holiday shopping, and the purchases they did make were for themselves.
“We’ve seen consumer awareness around supply issues and things they need to buy now,” said Katie Thomas, lead of the Kearney Consumer Institute, on the current consumer environment. And supply chain issues are “playing more to the emotion of the consumer” who doesn’t want to miss out on something big, but that may not extend out beyond the immediate family for many shoppers. “A toy your kid really wants, or the specific new appliance you want,” Thomas said. “Some of those are playing into the sense of scarcity.”

The messaging about scarcity ahead of the holidays started during the summer, and remains an issue at the highest levels of the government, where the Biden administration is focused on fixing supply chain problems at ports amid fears of a political backlash.

“There’s no political intervention that’s going to get this done, and there may not be a human intervention that gets this done because this issue is now going to last well into next year,” Steve Pasierb, the president and chief executive of the Toy Association, told Politico this week.
Retailers took to calling “September the new December” this year as they started promoting holiday sales early. Amazon rolled out its “Black Friday-worthy” deals the first week of October, the earliest holiday start in the online retailer’s history, and Target promised the “lowest prices on gifts” starting October 10.
Concerns from experts over supply shortages seem to increase daily, although Black Friday (the unofficial start to holiday spending) is over a month away. Shelves are emptying fast, and experts worry they will be completely empty by the time the typical holiday shopping season begins, which runs November through December, according to the National Retail Federation.
Still, Thomas says the early promotions won’t change the fact that consumers are used to doing actual holiday shopping starting around Black Friday, “or at least November.” Even with widespread holiday-placed promotions leading to more consumer incentive to buy now, “a lot of the shopping [consumers] are doing with these deals is buying things for themselves,” Thomas said. “That is why people love Prime Day, because it’s in the summer and they don’t actually feel like they have to be buying for people.”

A consumer hyper-aware of empty shelves

Consumers are dealing with a unique form of pandemic PTSD. “When we were in the throes of a pandemic, consumers expressed availability issues as one of their biggest frustrations,” Thomas said. “We’re all way more hyper-aware of out-of-stock and availability, and noticing shelves that are empty.”
Last year’s shortage of supplies on basics like toilet paper and cleaning products that were stockpiled at the start of the pandemic have made consumers more anxious with low inventory, said Vincent Quan, associate professor at FIT and global supply chain expert, and there are obvious benefits to partaking in a retailer’s early holiday promotions. “The consumer thinks ‘Oh wow, well there is a deal going on and I don’t even know if I can get this again, so I might as well just take the chance now and buy it,'” he said.
“Buy now and return later, because it won’t be there tomorrow,” Quan added. “If you don’t like it, you can always return it, so why take the chance?” 
It might be wise for consumers treating themselves to these early holiday deals to think a little bit more about purchasing holiday gifts for others, as some experts have warned. Thomas said even though there is a high level of “fanfare” about the extra early promotions, consumers should start their holiday shopping now given the meaningful supply issues retailers could run into later in the year. But ultimately, that doesn’t mean holiday shopping will end any earlier.
Retailers are trying to accommodate consumer needs, get them what they need sooner rather than later, and offer up a good deal, but “I’m just not sure people have Christmas and holiday shopping on the brain yet,” Thomas said. 
For the big retailers, there are benefits in the holiday promotions even if consumers aren’t in the holiday frame of mind yet. Amazon and Target can use these deals as consumer experiments, testing different types of sales and timing, according to Thomas, as retailers try to spread out consumer spending. “And that will make them all that much more successful as the season goes on,” she said.
When consumers do start their holiday shopping, they won’t face a situation in which there is nothing to buy, but Quan said they should be prepared for shortages of items that top consumers’ lists. And shipping delays will inevitably result in some tension. “As long as [their orders] arrive before Christmas consumers say they are fine with the delays,” according to Thomas’s research. But she added that people are defensive, and tensions are high. “We all just want to get back out there, we want to feel like things are normal again, but our fuses are shorter.” 
So while consumers are not as concerned over holiday inventory now, Thomas warns, “they’re going to be mad come December.” More