Retail shopping as we know it – especially between Thanksgiving and Christmas, still its busiest season of the year – continues to change before our very eyes.
The concept of downtown retail stores is hardly dead. Just look at what Apple stores have done for its brand; or Amazon opening its first-ever brick-and-mortar building.
Thanks to social media, consumers have become more savvy about their purchases and don't respond as readily to holiday-season promotions. That's why many of us are seeing fewer glossy holiday brochures and inserts in the mail or tucked into our newspapers (those of us who still read tabloid or broadsheet papers) as Black Friday (Thursday?) approaches.
Even retail salespeople are being retrained to approach customers in a different way, often aided by hand-held devices to help answer inventory and other questions. No, holiday shopping is alive and well; it's the marketing, the branding, and the consumer attitudes that are changing.