Consumers advised to 'shop smart' online
The National Consumer Agency is advising people to shop smart if buying online this Christmas.
Today is traditionally the busiest Monday before the festive period for online retailers.
It is estimated that nearly €260m will be spent online by Irish people in the run up to Christmas.
Karen O'Leary of the NCA advises anyone buying from internet retailers to take note of their delivery guarantee and to remember that consumers have more rights when buying online than they do when shopping on the high street.
Meanwhile in the US, Black Friday is a distant memory and Small Business Saturday is long gone, but now Americans are sharpening their keyboard skills for Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed a surge in online sales on the Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday, is the next in a series of days that retailers are counting on to jump-start the Christmas shopping season.
It is estimated that today will 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 20% from last year’s Cyber Monday, as retailers have ramped up deals to get shoppers to click on their websites.
Amazon.com, which started its Cyber Monday deals at midnight US time, is offering as much as 60% off a Panasonic VIERA 55-inch TV that is 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.
Retailers are hoping the deals will appeal to shoppers like Matt Sexton, 39, who for the first time plans to complete all his holiday shopping online this year on his iPad tablet computer.
Mr Sexton, who plans to spend up to 4,000 dollars this season, already shopped online on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, and found a laptop from Best Buy for $399 – a $200 saving – among other deals.
“The descriptions and reviews are so much better online so you can compare and price shop and for the most part get free shipping,” said utility company manager Mr Sexton, of Queens, New York.
He also said it was easier to return an online purchase to a physical store than it had been in previous years. “That helps with gifts,” he said.
How well retailers do on Cyber Monday will offer insight into Americans’ evolving shopping habits during the holiday season.
With the growth in high speed internet access and the wide 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 Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday has become busy for online shopping as well. Indeed, online sales on Thanksgiving Day, traditionally not a popular day for online shopping, rose 32% over last year to $633m, according to comScore.
And online sales on Black Friday were up 26% from the same day last year, to 1.042 billion dollars (£651m). It was the first time online sales on Black Friday surpassed the billion-dollar mark.
Even though Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest shopping day this year, industry watchers say it could just be a matter of time before other days take that ranking.
“Of all the benchmark spending days, Thanksgiving is growing at the fastest rate, up 128% over the last five years,” said Andrew Lipsman, a spokesman for comScore.
For the overall holiday season, comScore predicts online sales will be up 17% to $43.4bn. And the research firm expects online sales to surpass 10% of total retail spending this season. The National Retail Federation estimates that overall retail sales in November and December will be up 4.1 % this year to $586.1bn.
