• The holiday shopping season continues to start earlier in the year, thanks largely to Amazon.
• Amazon’s 48-hour deals event is underway, along with competing sales by the major retailers.
• Target was the first to kick off promotions on Sunday, and Costco is also in the mix.

Nevermind Black Friday, Green October is in full swing.

The holiday shopping season is underway earlier than ever, thanks largely to Amazon moving up its Prime Day deals event.

Faced with what would ordinarily be a shorter stretch of discounting (Thanksgiving and Christmas are closer together on the calendar than usual), the e-commerce juggernaut is pulling the start of the spending spree into early October.

And in modern retail, many competitors look to follow what Amazon does to stay competitive.

As Amazon has inched its 48-hour event earlier — from October 11 and 12 in 2022, to October 10 and 11 in 2023, and now to October 8 and 9 this year — competing promos by major retailers are also stepping up to win shoppers’ dollars.

Target kicked off the sequence early on Sunday with its Circle Week, while Walmart’s Deals event gets underway online on Tuesday and in stores on Wednesday.

The quasi-gravitational influence of all this promotional activity has even roped Costco into the mix with a Member Savings Event that started on Monday. Costco isn’t typically a trend-chasing company, so it’s notable that it’s on the pre-holiday deals bandwagon during this particular week in October ahead of its formal start to holiday savings in November.

Even if the traditional interval between Thanksgiving and Christmas was on the longer side, it would make sense for this further encroachment into pre-Halloween deals to occur.

As inflation has eased off, the big lesson for retailers over the past year is that customers are still willing to spend — if the price is right. US shoppers also splurged for celebrations and special occasions.

What better way for retailers to tap into those trends than to invent a holiday that celebrates deals and kicks off a whole season of festivities?