Top clicks for Cyber Monday

2012-11-25 21:48

(Supplied)

New York - Black Friday is a distant memory.

Small Business Saturday is long gone.

Now, it's Cyber Monday's turn.

Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday when people returned to their work computers, is the next in a line of days that stores are counting on to jump-start the holiday shopping season.

This year's Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest online shopping day of the year for the third year in a row.

According to research firm comScore, Americans are expected to spend $1.5bn, up from $1.25bn last year on Cyber Monday, as retailers ramp up deals to get shoppers to click on their websites.

Amazon.com, which is starting its Cyber Monday deals at midnight on Monday, is offering as much as 60% off a Panasonic Viera 140cm TV that's usually priced higher than $1 000.

Sears is offering $430 off a Maytag washer and dryer, each on sale for $399 and Kmart is offering 75% off diamond earrings and $60 off a 12-in-1 multigame table on sale for $89.99.

How well retailers do on Cyber Monday will offer insight into Americans' evolving shopping habits.

With the growth in high speed internet access and the wide and increasing use of smartphones and tablet computers, people are relying less on their work computers to shop than they did when Shop.org, the digital division of trade group The National Retail Federation, coined the term "Cyber Monday."

As a result, the period between the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday and Cyber Monday has become busy for online shopping as well.

Indeed, IBM Benchmark, which tracks online sales, said on Thanksgiving, a day that historically had not been big for online shopping, online sales this year rose 17% over 2011. Of that, mobile shopping, or shopping on smartphones and tablets, rose 18%.

- AP