The deals are good enough and promotions aggressive enough that the millions of Americans who are supposed to shop on Thanksgiving and Black Friday will. However, retailers face the same puzzle they do every year. Are the sales made on this holiday weekend increases in overall sales for the entire season between the start of November and the end of December?  Or, are they sales which steal from the purchasing that might happen in the three weeks before Christmas? If the latter is true, even the most conservative of estimates about industry revenue improvement won’t be true.

The two most important forecasts issued by the National Retail Federation for 2013 cover 1) overall holiday sales and 2), the Thanksgiving weekend’s activity:

NRF expects sales in the months of November and December to marginally increase 3.9 percent to $602.1 billion, over 2012’s actual 3.5 percent holiday season sales growth. The forecast is higher than the 10-year average holiday sales growth of 3.3 percent.

And,

For the first time since 2002, Thanksgiving falls as late as the calendar possibly allows it to, but eager holiday shoppers are already mapping their shopping strategies for the big weekend. According to a preliminary Thanksgiving weekend shopping survey, up to 140 million people plan to or will shop over the weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday), a slight decrease from the 147 million who planned to do so last year. For the first time, NRF asked if people plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day: of those who plan to shop that weekend, nearly one-quarter (23.5%) plan to on Thanksgiving Day, or 33 million shoppers.

The two forecasts cannot be directly compared because they use different metrics. They do, however, paint a picture of a poor improvement in holiday activity married with a short post-Thanksgiving sales season. If Thanksgiving does not draw an abundance of shoppers, the runway to the end of the year is short.

The retail industry clearly has elected to risk that brisk Thanksgiving sales are better than the odds  shoppers will steal from their entire holiday budgets. Consumers have enough money, they must reason,  to spend a great deal in December as well. Thanksgiving does not borrow from the days which come after it–maybe.

The proof of the risk is in the hours most retails have decided to stay open this weekend. Many will open stores on Thanksgiving. These ranks from the largest in Walmart (NYSE: WMT) to the most troubled in J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP). Of course, with Walmart’s size and balance sheet, it can risk a slow December. J.C. Penney cannot. Healthy retailers will take a risk with Thanksgiving retail sales. Weak retailer will risk their existence.

At the mall this weekend, the fate of the industry might be decided. People will either spend all of their holiday budgets, or they are better off than most experts suppose

 

 

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