J.C. Penney (JCP) shoppers can get special online deal through Wednesday, with the department store planning to launch its Cyber Monday offers on Sunday.
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Madeira said Wal-Mart has noticed that in recent years searches for Cyber Monday deals on their app and Web site start to pick up Sunday evening, with many shoppers staying up until the midnight to pounce early.
The decision by Wal-Mart to maximize Cyber Monday is another step in the trend of retailers trying to stretch what were once single-day shopping events to capture more sales.
But the data also found that Black Friday isn’t the only big shopping day of the season. Until 2015, Walmart’s online deals started on the first Monday after Thanksgiving. The items become available at 8 p.m. Eastern US time on Sunday.
After last year’s images of crazed consumerist brawls from an Asda superstore, Black Friday has gotten a bit of a rep for bargain brutality.
Survey respondents shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend expect 59 percent of their spending to be online, up from 52 percent a year ago, compared to 36 percent in stores, down from 45 percent in 2014.
Fernando Madeira, chief executive of Walmart.com, explains that because of internet access, it makes no business sense to limit the sale to the weekends preceding Thanksgiving, held every fourth Thursday of November. More than half (56 percent) say that they feel more loyal to retailers who close on Thanksgiving Day.
“I know there are some people that just love the thrill of finding that deep discount, but people are starting to realize they can get that deep discount online so why bother to get up at 5 in the morning and go shopping on Black Friday when I can just get up and in my pajamas do that shopping from my house”, said Pope.
Like past year, Wal-Mart’s Cyber Monday deals will come in two waves, with an initial array of sales at kickoff and then a second round the retailer calls the “evening edition” set to kick in Monday evening.
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The estimated sales for Cyber Monday are $3 billion in the USA alone.
