“That makes Cyber Monday a meek day for margins – and that is a challenge for retailers”, said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
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It’s projected that more than 120 million people plan to shop this Cyber Monday.
Online shoppers this holiday season were expected to do some significant buying on the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is generally one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
Electronics are by far the biggest draw that accounts for as much 75% of today’s online purchases.
121.3 million people are expected to shop online for Cyber Monday deals, according to the National Retail Federation. The popular discounted sale on the iPad Mini 2 started at the beginning of the month and is still available on Cyber Monday. Each of those thousands of products still remains mystery until now.
Are you one of those shoppers who said “no thanks” to the crowds this holiday weekend? But Walmart and its rival retailers have been increasingly spreading out deep discount bargains over a longer period of time.
And yet online sales on Monday were on pace for a record-breaking day, with forecasters from Adobe projecting that $3 billion would be spent online before the deals bonanza was over.
Retailers had web promotions all weekend, and many major retailers started Cyber Monday a day early and are now promoting deals throughout “Cyber Week”. Consumers are getting smarter as they learn to look out for the Cyber Monday deals and to see if those deals are even worth it. Plus, there are deals offered online throughout the year, making it less desirable to shop around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Adobe, which tracks 200 million visitors to 4,500 retail websites, said US$490 million had been spent online as of 10am on Monday, the latest data available.
Online shopping is taking its toll on brick-and-mortar shopping.
Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal reported that Target’s Website crashed at least twice Monday morning, which a Target spokesman said came during “unprecedented” order volumes.
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Consultancy Kurt Salmon, which works with retailers on supply chain issues, said it has found that some large retailers had trouble filling seasonal jobs in their online distribution centers this holiday season.
