Hollister

Another day, another special retail event. It’s Cyber Monday (as if you didn’t know) and the question is: will it retain its status in the US as the biggest online shopping day?

Some thought it wouldn’t as Black Friday’s online migration has picked up pace and shoppers no longer need to wait until they get back to work to take advantage of fast internet connections.

But, as Mark Twain would say, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, fewer people plan to shop online today but they’re still going to be online in greater numbers than last Friday. Perhaps that’s inevitable given that they had the luxury of shopping in-store when they were off work on Friday but haven’t today.

Nordstrom

Anyway, the National Retail Federation’s Cyber Monday Expectations Survey (conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics over the weekend), showed 121m shoppers (49.5%) plan to shop online today, down from the 126.9m a year ago. The NRF said 103m people shopped online over the weekend.

Why today? It’s all down to the deals. “Unlike 10 years ago, we live in a world in which you can shop anywhere at any time,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. “It’s no longer about one day, but a season of digital deals, and savvy online shoppers are ready to see what exclusive promotions retailers have in store for Cyber Monday. Shoppers have seen promotions roll out for the past several weeks, but if the price is right on Cyber Monday, they’ll definitely show up ready to spend.”

So what else does the survey show us?

• Mobile is key but not dominant. While 29.6m (24.4%) consumers said they will use their mobile device to shop on Cyber Monday, eight in 10 (80%) said they will use their home computers to shop online, despite heavy retailer investment in optimising their mobile websites.
• That’s interesting as data has also shown that online shopping from traditional computers rose nearly 10% on Black Friday.
• As many as 42.4% of Cyber Monday shoppers plan to shop online in the early morning, while a third (33%) will shop in the late morning.
• Many will wait until lunchtime to shop (16.6%) and over a quarter will take a more leisurely approach, waiting until early afternoon (29.5%).

Macy’s