For the last couple of years I have always wondered why people feel the need to stay outside all night in the cold, just to save a few bucks. I realize some of the deals are great ($400 for a 42 in Plasma), but especially with the Wal-Mart worker getting trampled to death last year, I just cannot see the need for all of the hassle.
Well those times may be changing. I found a report on CNNMoney going over the sales on Cyber Monday. The sales grew 14% and customers bought 30% more items per order from last year. The most popular online companies on last Monday were jewelry and clothing retailers.
One example of a deal was the 8GB iPod Touch for $158. Also Zhu Zhu pet hamsters were a hot seller, at $9.99 each. Wal-Mart also offered 150 specials on certain items like televisions, digital cameras, and MP3 players.
Through out the day 4.3 million customers per minute shopping visited web sites in North America.
For more information pertaining to Cyber Monday, visit the following website.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/01/news/economy/cyber_monday_shopping/index.htm
4.3 million customers per minute in North America is astounding. I would be interested in seeing numbers for work productivity on cyber monday. The amount of money lost from non-productive employees must be staggering.
ReplyDeleteJassin and I visited Borders Books headquarters on Friday. The company has both brick-and-mortar and an eCommerce store, so they had to accommodate both rushes. It is crazy to see that there were 4.3 million customers per minute shopping in the U.S. We spoke with the CIO and he said the whole Cyber Monday rush was pretty stressful. Thankfully, their IT systems were able to handle the traffic without any issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the guys! this is a huge number. I have never actually bought anything during Cyber Monday. To be quiet honest, I just heard of it from this post so GREAT post Kevin!
ReplyDeleteI agree waiting outside for 12+ hours isn't worth it to save a few bucks on something. The value of my personal time far exceeds any black Friday deals. Although i did surf some cyber Monday deals i didn't find anything worthwhile enough to buy.
ReplyDeleteAs a commission retail employee I have come to see the effect on web sales on in store help. While many are happy to easily save the extra 5-10$ per item for buying it online, what they don't know is that that margin was the amount that the associate would of received for helping a customer in store. So often now i can only laugh as customers come in, angry that they cannot find assistance to learn about an item they had bought online.
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