Cyber Monday shoppers are expected to set a record on the year’s biggest day for online purchases
LA TimesConsumers in the United States are scouring the internet for online deals as they look to take advantage of the post-Thanksgiving shopping marathon on Cyber Monday. Even though e-commerce is now part and parcel of many people’s regular routines and the holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday — a term coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation — has become the biggest online shopping day of the year, thanks to the deals and the hype the industry has created to fuel it. Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, notes that discounts from Thanksgiving onward have “exceeded expectations” — and online spending throughout Cyber Week is on track to cross a record $40-billion mark combined. U.S. shoppers spent $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 10.2% increase over last year, according to Adobe Analytics. Meanwhile, software company Salesforce, which also tracks online shopping, estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled $17.5 billion in the United States and $74.4 billion globally.