Peppermint mocha lattes, Christmas music at the mall, lights twinkling in store windows. It’s the perfect holiday scene, with one glaring oversight; the calendar still says October. While it’s undeniable the retail industry has evolved over time to create “cues” that insight holiday anticipation in consumers, what happens when these cues start coming just a little too early? While some argue that setting out the holiday decorations can help to ward off winter blues, a growing number of opponents insist it can actually lead to feelings of depression during the “most wonderful time of the year.”
To begin, it’s important to recognize that the retail industry is just that - an industry. Its prime objective is to make a profit. With the rise of technology in recent decades, however, it seems the industry has grown into more of a driving societal force, with its domination of media and social outlets that have become the prime modes of communications for most of the developed world.
This raises the question, consequently, of whether or not this domination morally obligates the commercial industry to operate in the public’s best interest?
To suggest that the commercial industry holds an ethical responsibility to operate in the consumer’s best interest assumes that this responsibility stems from the industry having a large impact on consumer’s lives, and as a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed, it certainly does. Through a series of trials in which students of different backgrounds, faiths, etc. were exposed to traditional holiday decor used by the commercial industry around the holidays, the study found while the exposure to the holiday stimuli increased feelings of happiness in Christians, it actually caused a rapid rise in the reporting of depressed feelings by all other respondents.
With the results of this study, one could certainly argue that the introduction of holiday décor is, at best, insensitive to the numerous religions and cultures throughout the country, (and at worst, a blatant expression of religious stereotyping and favoring one faith over all others,) many argue that the decorations are more about tradition than actual religious sentiment, yet this theory is not without its faults.
The early introduction of holiday décor as a means of evoking fond memories of tradition has long been the industry’s go-to argument for keeping the plastic trees glittering and carols blaring, yet as Dr. Ron Hill of the Villanova School of Business stated in an interview with the local news outlet CBS Connecticut, “holidays in and of themselves are often separated by some demarcation … in time.” he told CBS Connecticut. “The end of Thanksgiving is the proverbial start of the Christmas season. So people see this demarcation as being important in part because, when they overlap … it disallows people to fully engage in a holiday and enjoy themselves.”
Krystine Batcho, Le Moyne College psychology professor, further supported his statement by adding, “Saturating public space with earlier and earlier holiday fare is upsetting, because it violates and devalues the psychological role holidays play in our lives. Their value depends upon their distinctiveness and special features. Earlier holiday décor separates us from the actual events that hold, and will hold, such emotional meaning for us.”
While the negative impact placing holiday décor has in terms of acting as emotional stimuli is clearly documented, it still remains to be seen how the commercial industry will react. While from an ethical standpoint one would hope the industry would take responsibility as the societal force that it has become, it cannot be denied that the monetary benefits of exposing consumers to products and sales earlier than the calendar would naturally allow is overwhelming. New programs such as layaway and pay-as-you-go allow consumers to indulge in their holiday shopping sprees without feeling the immediate hit to their pocketbook, and in turn encourage spending a greater amount of money over a longer period of time.
Perhaps the question, then, shouldn’t be one of selecting a calendar date for which it is appropriate for commercial companies to display their holiday spirit, but rather to consider at what point the industry, with it’s power in social media and communication, holds ethical responsibilities to it’s consumers even when these responsibilities might impact profit margins.
