Summary
RetailMeNot didn't wait for Black Friday to throw its first real punch of the season. The company rolled out App Week, a cash-back blitz running September 21 through 27 that spans seven major shopping categories, and the timing feels deliberate — a pre-holiday land grab designed to lock shoppers into its app before rivals get their own promotions off the ground. It's a savvy move in a market where every coupon platform is fighting for the same wallet, and it immediately puts pressure on the rest of the discount ecosystem to respond in kind.
Details
That pressure is showing up most clearly at Rakuten, which countered with its own September Big Deal Reveal, an event actively promoted across its blog and marketing channels to keep cash-back shoppers from drifting toward RetailMeNot's fresh app-based hook. The two platforms are essentially racing to become the default browser tab before the holiday shopping season hits full speed, and that rivalry is spilling into how consumers think about savings apps altogether. Meanwhile, the hardware side of retail is running its own parallel story. Best Buy is leaning hard into holiday-tech planning, syncing new partner announcements with the kind of category push that turns browsers into buyers once gift lists start forming. Apple Store isn't far behind, riding the current iPhone and accessories launch cycle that reliably pulls foot traffic and online orders alike every fall, while Samsung is capitalizing on the same seasonal window, showing up constantly in phone comparison roundups that shape which device ends up under the tree. Home Depot and Lowe's, longtime rivals in home improvement, are both leaning on fresh corporate updates and weekly-ad pushes, a reminder that hardware retail has its own busy season tied to fall projects and winterizing homes rather than gift-wrapped boxes. On the resale side, eBay and Poshmark are both benefiting from a broader secondhand-fashion boom that shows no sign of slowing — eBay through renewed coverage of its seller-center tools and marketplace dynamics, Poshmark through repeated mentions in stories about cross-platform selling and the growing comfort shoppers feel buying pre-owned. And behind the scenes, Shopify keeps cementing itself as the infrastructure layer powering much of this activity, staying visible in seller-news roundups tied to platform updates, social commerce integrations and an international expansion push that keeps merchants — and competitors — paying close attention.
- 1RetailMeNot didn't wait for Black Friday to throw its first real punch of the season.
- 2It's a savvy move in a market where every coupon platform is fighting for the same wallet, and it immediately puts pressure on the rest of the discount ecosystem to respond in kind.
- 3The two platforms are essentially racing to become the default browser tab before the holiday shopping season hits full speed, and that rivalry is spilling into how consumers think about savings apps altogether.
- 4Meanwhile, the hardware side of retail is running its own parallel story.
- 5Best Buy is leaning hard into holiday-tech planning, syncing new partner announcements with the kind of category push that turns browsers into buyers once gift lists start forming.
Conclusion
Put together, the picture is one of an industry warming up its engines before the real holiday sprint begins. Discount platforms are already jockeying for position, big-box retailers are quietly stacking their tech and hardware pushes, and the resale economy keeps proving it's no longer a niche but a mainstream shopping habit. Shopify's steady presence underneath it all is a reminder that this entire ecosystem — from cash-back apps to marketplace giants — increasingly runs on the same rails. For US shoppers, that means more competing deals, more app notifications, and a retail landscape that's clearly gearing up for its busiest stretch of the year.