Despite record levels of online spending over the Black Friday weekend, savvy shoppers still have plenty of appetite for one-day only deals that retailers have lined up for Cyber Monday. According to a survey conducted for Shop.org by BIGinsight, 129.2 million Americans plan to shop on Cyber Monday this year, up from the 122.8 million who shopped last year, and the 106.9 million who shopped on Cyber Monday in 2010. Eager to meet consumers’ demands, 85 percent of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, according to a new survey. “Whether from the couch or the cubicle, online shoppers will make this Cyber Monday bigger than ever,” says Shop.org executive director Vicki Cantrell. “Retailers have honed and improved their websites, mobile sites and social media outreach to be better than ever, and consumers know that come Cyber Monday, many retailers will have a slew of new promotions to help them make a real dent in their holiday shopping lists, without breaking the bank or even having to head to the store.”
The number of shoppers planning to use their smartphones or other mobile device this Cyber Monday increased to 20.4 million this year, from 17.8 million in 2011, an increase of 14.4 percent. In just three years, the number of Americans saying they would use their mobile device to shop on Cyber Monday has skyrocketed from just 3.6 million (3.8 percent) in 2009 to 20.4 million (15.8 percent) in 2012.
While the majority of Cyber Monday shoppers will make purchases from their home computer (88 percent, or 113.7 million people), nearly 16 million will also use their computers at work to shop this year (12.4 percent). A recent Shop.org survey estimates that nearly 72 million Americans will shop from work at some point during the holiday season.
“The momentum from a solid Black Friday weekend certainly looks like it will carry on into Cyber Monday,” adds BIGinsight Consumer Insights director Pam Goodfellow. “Millions of shoppers will be visiting retailers’ websites from their smartphones, tablets, home computers and work computers to check out special Cyber Monday promotions and make the most of their holiday shopping budgets.”
While many retailers expect to see sales and traffic spike over lunch hours, Cyber Monday shoppers plan to go online throughout the day. According to the survey, 44.4 percent of Cyber Monday shoppers plan to hit the web early in the morning, with more than one-third of (36.8 percent) planning to shop in the late morning. Additionally, nearly three in 10 Cyber Monday shoppers (29.2 percent) will shop in the early evening.
Cyber Monday, a term coined by Shop.org in 2005, began after retailers noticed a trend of people shopping online on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Today, Cyber Monday is viewed as the ceremonial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season, when shoppers flood websites expecting robust promotions and many retailers highlight some of their most compelling holiday offers.