The Supply Chain Grinch and the Unmerry Holiday Buying Season
Supply constraints and shipping bottlenecks could force us to recalibrate our holiday buying habits
We spend a lot of money every holiday season. Even in the heart of the pandemic, consumers managed to spend nearly a trillion dollars ($876 B), which was, remarkably, 4.1% more than the pre-pandemic previous holiday shop fest.
But for most of 2021, a storm’s been brewing and is now threatening to make the most Grinch-like of Holiday Buying Seasons: Strangled Supply Chains.
Big companies like Apple and massive chip supplier TSMC have been talking about it for months and now, like so many other long-tail effects of the global pandemic, this one’s coming home to roost at the worst possible time.
The pandemic changed buying habits in vast and unpredictable ways. First, we stopped shopping, and then we bought everything online. Industries that sought supplies like cheap chips from TSMC stopped ordering them because, for example, no one was buying (or driving cars) leading to issues with getting those chips today. Manufacturing and delivery slowed down around the globe. Then the U.S. government started funneling cash into consumer pockets, which reenergized some buying. Vaccinations and consumers reemerging…
