As retailers enter the last full week before Christmas, there’s still lots of uncertainty about how the season will turn out. There’s no doubt that holiday business is being compressed by a late Thanksgiving, but the question is how effectively marketers can squeeze shopping dollars out of consumers’ pockets in six fewer days.

Indeed, retailers worked overtime in November to kick the season off early, advertising Black Friday pricing several days ahead of time. But despite those efforts, if you had the words “sluggish” or “lackluster” in a drinking game based on the November retail sales report issued by the U.S. Commerce Department, you might now be dealing with a pretty impressive hangover.

Reasons for confidence

But for all the angst that we’ve seen in the media about the November report that showed retail sales excluding cars and gasoline edged up 0.1% from the prior month, there are reasons to be confident that in the end, Holiday 2019 will be somewhat stronger than a year ago.

The November report flies in the face of other economic data that indicates a strong economy and rising consumer confidence. The most oft-cited theories for the soft results relate to the calendar. For example, this year, Cyber Monday will be calculated as part of December’s sales (as will the last day of the Thanksgiving weekend); last year both those days were in November.

Moody’s Vice President Mickey Chadha is quoted in Retail Dive as saying the company’s analysts “continue to expect that strong consumer confidence, wage growth, low unemployment and the strong macro-economic environment in the US will result in 2019 retail sales growth of over 3.5%.”

Report: Toys strong online, but struggling in stores

BMO Capital Markets toy industry analyst Gerrick Johnson noted this weekend that toy sales had “improved markedly” since Thanksgiving amid “strong traffic” and a “burst of energy” in stores. But while the online toy business continues to be strong, he said, “sales are trending at or below already lowered expectations, both season-to-date and post-Thanksgiving.”

A similarly mixed report was given to the Wall Street Journal by Richard Derr, owner of Learning Express Toys in Lake Zurich, IL: “The season started slow with weak months in October and November, and demand for December has only just started to pick up.”

According to the Commerce Department, sales declined sharply in November across key categories for holiday gift-giving including apparel, department stores and sporting goods.

Variations among retailers and demographic groups

Those sales trends varied among types of consumers, and also among retail tiers. Moody’s analysts expect growth to be driven by “e-commerce players like Amazon; off-price retailers like TJX and Ross; value and convenience-oriented retailers like Dollar General and Dollar Tree; and discounters and warehouse clubs like Walmart and Target,” Chadha told Retail Dive.

A Shopify survey earlier this found that most consumers expected to spend the same (56%) or more (27%) on their holiday purchases this year than they did in 2018. Millennials (40%) are more likely to increase their spending, while Gen Xers (19%) and Baby Boomers (19%) are less likely.