Although summer is a time when many of us are thinking about sunshine and weekend trips to the beach, for retailers, summer means important preparation for the holiday season, the most important sales period of the year. The typical holiday season presents retailers with familiar challenges: increased product demand, planning in-store seasonal staffing, supply chain pressures, and spikes in web traffic—to name a few.

**But 2020 is going to be different. **

The long-tail impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to be felt in the retail industry through this year and into the next. Many retailers have been forced to reduce their physical footprints or change the way they operate, in addition to exploring new ways of delivering their products into the hands of customers, with more changes likely to come. Several major U.S. retailers have already announced being closed for Thanksgiving, further changing the digital and physical dynamics of the season. So how will this year’s holiday season play out?

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We know the months ahead are paved with uncertainty, from fluctuating physical distancing restrictions, to questions on the strength of consumer spending given the pandemic, to the emergence of new consumer channels and buying paradigms. Retailers can prepare by understanding how shopper behaviors have changed, and by following the latest Google Cloud guidance in our ebook, “A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success.”

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