Ahead of this year's holiday shopping season, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT) are launching October deals to encourage consumers to start their gift buying earlier this year.
Notably, Amazon intends to host a Prime Day-like shopping event, exclusively for Prime members only, on Oct. 11 through Oct. 12.
"We are so excited to help Prime members kick off the holiday season with Amazon's new Prime Early Access Sale-an exclusive opportunity for members to get deep discounts on top brands we know they are looking for this time of year," said Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime.
Amazon's upcoming sales event will offer Prime members the opportunity to get a head start on shopping for the holiday season. Sales will be unleashed in all areas, including electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, pets, toys, and technological devices.
Rival Walmart hopes to compete with Amazon's sales, offering its own early holiday deals from October 10 through Oct. 13. In starting a day prior to Amazon's big sales event, Walmart hopes to be the first one to draw in shoppers to its savings.
However, Target is already ahead of the curve, with the retail giant already completing its first Deal Days shopping event from Oct 6 through Oct 8, which offered customers three days worth of savings both online and in stores.
One feature of Target's big sales event that makes it stand out from Amazon's Prime Day is what is known as a "price match guarantee." This means that any item that is bought between the dates of October 6 and December 24 will be able to be price matched if the product is ever lowered in price at a different event.
Customers also are not required to be members in order to shop at Target or Walmart's early shopping events event, unlike the Amazon Prime Day event.