Christmas is here — at retail. For the nation’s mass retailers, the clearly defined holiday selling season has begun. Not that the merchandise is yet on the shelves. Not that the holiday promotional programs have been launched.

Christmas is here — at retail. For the nation’s mass retailers, the clearly defined holiday selling season has begun. Not that the merchandise is yet on the shelves. Not that the holiday promotional programs have been launched.

Not that the first signs of the Christmas-to-be have yet been sensed or felt. But the holiday merchandise has long since been chosen. Holiday promotional programs have long since been locked up. Much of the merchandise is already in the stores. And the days until the most critical of holidays has begun can be marked off in, well, days.

Though it’s said each year, this holiday selling season is truly marked by uncertainty.
Consumer behavior, always a question, is more uncertain than it’s been since the Great Recession of 2008. The state of the economy is up for question as well.

Equally uncertain is the consumer’s buying mood. Is she interested in herself? Her family? Her home?

But the biggest question revolves around the retailer.

More to the point, what kinds of merchandise do America’s mass retailers believe will pull them through this holiday season? What products will sell, and which ones will remain on the shelves? Will retailers play it safe or gamble? Will they rely on merchandise that has sold in the past or will they pay heed to the perceived wisdom that this year will be different, that each new consumer will buy merchandise she has ignored in the past? Come January, will the mass retailing community be busy congratulating itself or bemoaning the lost opportunities and the missed expectations — or both?

Truth is, nobody knows. And the reason is obvious: These are new retailers or, put another way, old retailers trying new ways of doing business, new programs to reach old customers, new approaches to rekindle interest and enthusiasm where apathy now reigns.

A new Walmart will open its doors come November, a retailer that has worked hard to reengage its customer, become more relevant, address concerns and issues that, in the past, were seldom considered. It is a Walmart that has resumed its onetime core commitment to its core customer, the head of a family that lives from week to week, and from paycheck to paycheck.

The retailer maintains, correctly, that its associates are more engaged in this task, more committed, more amply rewarded, more reliably trained, more motivated and more important to the retailer’s customers.

Still, the company is largely led and managed by a new group of senior executives, leaders somewhat unfamiliar with Walmart’s past business practices. Where price was once Walmart’s calling card, the retailer has diversified its offering, combining prices with expanded assortments, more service and a spruced-up retail environment. Is that enough? Is it too much? Is it misdirected or misaligned? No one yet knows.

Target faces similar uncertainties, though they have emanated from different roots. The company today is run and managed by a different group of leaders than those senior executives who oversaw operations as recently as two years ago. The merchandise assortment relies on different elements to attract consumers. The most obvious example is the retailer’s divestiture of its pharmacy business, now owned by the CVS drug chain. Food has been de-emphasized as a major category, an example of the retailer’s decision not to follow Walmart in a commitment to grocery categories. Beauty care is more important, as are certain elements of health care.

Have these alterations made Target more relevant as a Christmas destination for consumers, or less so? Only time will tell.

The two leading U.S. drug chains have changed colors as well. Walgreens has taken on a Boots coloring, reflective of the Walgreens-Boots merger so recently completed. But few people, either inside or outside the organization, have yet grasped what that means. This much is certain: Walgreens is different today. Still to be determined is how different — or what those differences will mean this Christmas.

Similarly, CVS is different today. Indeed, it is no longer simply a chain drug retailer. It is more, much more. But, here again, defining what that means is difficult, even for those inside the company. Some observers call it America’s largest health care provider. But again, few know what that means. Or, more importantly, what it will mean this Christmas.

Finally, we have America’s grocery retailers, in many respects stronger than they’ve been in years.

In theory, that strength will make them more customer friendly this Christmas. On the other hand, perhaps they will remain what they’ve always been: the consumer’s first choice for weekly groceries. Or perhaps not.