Retailers line up special deals for Cyber Monday

Around 75 per cent of Internet retailers will offer special deals on Cyber Monday to kick off the holiday online shopping season, a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey released on Monday 19 November shows.
The survey, conducted among 116 retailers, showed that 72 per cent have special offers lined up, while only 43 per cent featured offers similar to two years ago, when the Monday after Thanksgiving was first dubbed Cyber Monday.

Online shoppers often scour the Internet from office computers during lunch breaks or when they''re supposed to be working. And they are getting wise about looking for great deals. Gifts.com, which provides information about online sales, says its Cyber Monday visitors more than tripled last year from 2005.

Next Monday, about one-third of Internet stores will offer special e-mail campaigns and almost 30 per cent will have one-day sales, the NRF survey says. Many retailers also will offer free shipping for the holiday season.

Cyber Monday isn''t the No: 1 online shopping day, but retailers still compete hard for customers. This year, retailers want to hook shoppers sooner, because they are worried a weak economy may make people thrifty around Christmas, spending less than last year.

The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the online holiday shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, while Cyber Monday symbolises a busy day for online retailers. The term ''Cyber Monday'' was coined based on research saying that 77 per cent of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004.

The theory behind its 2005 launch was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. This theory has not survived the test of time. Nonetheless, Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, sponsored by the National Retail Federation''s Shop.org division, in which online retailers offer low prices and promotions.

Cyber Monday is not the busiest shopping day of the year for online retailers; the busiest shopping days usually fall between 5 and 15 December in any given year. In 2005, the year the term Cyber Monday was launched, the busiest online shopping day of the year in the US was actually 12 December, two weeks after Cyber Monday.