I can see why retail executives might wish to lower expectations, but unlike the MSM, they don’t try to scare people out of coming to their stores.
The financial news is only targeted at Wall Street. Retail customers typically don’t pay as much attention to the ‘news’ as they do the advertisements for whatever the new ‘it’ product is this year. (If there is no ‘it’ product, then retail really IS screwed like they are claiming.)