Sure, everyone has heard of Black Friday, but what about Cyber Monday? While hordes of holiday shoppers will flock to area malls and department stores looking for the best deals and discounts today, another group of buyers will sit back and enjoy the weekend before beginning their gift-hunting Monday.
Instead of waiting in lines, these buyers will be online.
“Cyber Monday has entered the lexicon of the retail world,” said Tom Saquella, president of the Maryland Retailers Association. “On that Monday, a lot of people start their shopping at work, and there?s enough time before Christmas to have your gifts shipped on time.”
An increasing number of buyers are spending online for convenience, shipping discounts and a variety of choices. Online holiday spending is expected to surpass $33 billion, a 22 percent increase from $27 billion last year, according to Massachusetts-based Forrester Research.
Consumers, on average, plan to do about 30 percent of their shopping online, up from 29 percent last year, according to a National Retail Federation survey.
“Online shoppers have been growing each year,” Saquella said. “When online shopping started years ago, people said, ?Oh, no one?s ever going to buy clothes online.? Well, clothing is now the biggest seller online.”
Retailers have realized this trend, and Web sites have become much more user-friendly and visually appealing for shoppers, said Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal, a company that provides online services for retailers.
“The online rush actually starts right after dinner on Thanksgiving, about 9 p.m.,” Sharma said.
Sunday and Monday remain bigonline shopping days, Sharma said, with online sales dipping a bit the week before Christmas, due to limited time to have a gift shipped before Dec. 25.
The movement to online holiday shopping hasn?t hurt malls and department stores as much as originally expected, said Christopher Schardt, senior general manager of Harborplace & The Gallery in Baltimore.
“It was about six years ago that online shopping was expected to be the nail in the coffin for malls,” Schardt said.
“People still want to try on clothing, smell the fragrance of a perfume or compare the resolution of televisions,” Schardt said. “There?s that first-person quality that a mall offers.”
