WATCH: For years, retailers have been trying to get us to buy into Cyber Monday, offering up great deals online. But as Mike Drolet reports, it’s getting hard to keep track of what’s really on sale and for how long.
NEW YORK – After a busy holiday weekend in shopping malls, millions of Americans are expected to log on and keep buying on the day called Cyber Monday.
The Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday has been the biggest online shopping day of the year since 2010. The day could take on added importance after a Thanksgiving weekend that saw fewer shoppers and lower spending than last year, according to some estimates.
Retailers have been pushing deals all month and particularly the past week, hoping to spur customers to spend. That may have taken away some spending from Thanksgiving weekend.
Research firm comScore expects people to spend about $2.5 billion on Cyber Monday.
There’s reason to think a lot of dollars are migrating online.
PayPal said its global mobile payment volume jumped 47 per cent on Thanksgiving Day compared with last year. Wal-Mart said it had more than 500 million page views on Thanksgiving, and eBay says it sold 2,000 iPad Air 2 tablets for $399 at a rate of one a second.
The name “Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation’s online arm, Shop.org, to encourage people to shop online. The name was also a nod to online shopping being done at work, where faster connections made it easier to browse, less of a factor now.
WATCH: Last year, Amazon customers ordered 426 items every second on Cyber Monday, and this year that number is expected to grow. In order to meet demand thousands of robots have been added to a staff already in the tens of thousands. Kara Tsuboi takes us inside an Amazon fulfillment center to watch the robots in action.
Cyber Monday comes after a weekend that saw 5.3 per cent fewer shoppers and 11 per cent less spending, according to estimates by the National Retail Federation.
“Online is nowhere near its maturity, so Cyber Monday should be big, with a lot of strength in the days leading up to it,” Forester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said. “More consumers are spending more shopping dollars online.”
She expects two spikes in online shopping: one during the long Thanksgiving weekend, including Cyber Monday, and one later in December when shipping deadlines to get items by Christmas start to hit.
Research firm comScore expects online sales to rise 16 per cent to $61 billion during the November and December shopping season, up 16 per cent from last year. ComScore tracks U.S. online sales based on observed behaviour of a representative U.S. consumer panel of 2 million Web users.
The National Retail Federation has forecast overall holiday sales will increase 4.1 per cent to $616.9 billion in 2014.
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AP Business Writer Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report.
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