NEW YORK — Santa in the summer?
Retailers are pumping still more energy this year into trying to get shoppers to loosen their purse strings early for Christmas with sparkly ornaments, holiday music and special prices. In July.
Target enters the game for the first time, with a one-day online sale starting Friday on 500 items that’s modeled after sales typically held Thanksgiving weekend. And Sears and Toys R Us are promoting “Christmas in July” online and in stores based on the success they saw with last year’s efforts.
“We really wanted to create that sense of excitement, that sense of urgency,” Target spokeswoman Molly Hanus said.
Retailers pushed Christmas promotions as early as September during the recession as they competed for shoppers’ dwindling dollars and tried to get them back into stores. Some recession-weary shoppers have been glad to spread out the cost of the holidays, especially if discounts average 40 percent like Target’s. But others may be turned off by the snowflakes and Santas and glitz.
“It’s smarter to buy this early,” Ebony Rios, 17, said while shopping over the weekend at Toys R Us in Times Square, where a Santa in sunglasses lounged in a swimming pool in one ad.
But Tammy Perez of Bloomington, Ind., wasn’t ready: “It’s too hot to think about Christmas.”
