Today is projected to be the largest online shopping day in U.S. history. This year, Americans are expected to spend $6.6 billion (that is BILLION) online on this Monday following Thanksgiving. That is a 16.5% increase over last year’s record-setter.
The first Cyber Monday was in 2005. Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation came up with the term. Other suggestions were Blue Monday, after the color of web links, or Green Monday for the money being made, but she liked the clarity of Cyber Monday. Obviously, it stuck.
In 2005 online sales were new. At that time, between 10%-30% of shopping was done online. People were used to going out shopping on Black Friday and waited until Monday to shop online, when they got back to work. That was, at least in part, due to the fact that most people were still using slow dialup connections at home. At work they had access to high speed internet connection.
Side note: Employers, do not expect much productivity from your employees today. You may think they are crunching numbers for the end of year report, but they are crunching numbers for the savings at Best Buy. Just sayin’.
Within a year, Cyber Monday became a household term, even though its original reason had faded. Today, 73% of U.S. households have broadband and 75% of Americans have smart phones.
According to research, there are other reasons that Cyber Monday is a good shopping day. It also means that the in-laws have gone home, the Christmas lights are up and you have a little time to breathe before the next wave of holiday mania.
It is predicted that U.S. online shopping sales will reach a whopping $107.4 billion this holiday season, with Cyber Monday kicking off the spree.
Deloitte predicts that total holiday spending in 2017 may exceed $1 trillion.
I actually had to look up how many zeros that is. And my friends, there are 12. Here is what it looks like: $1,000,000,000,000.
Just for fun, let’s break it down. One thousand thousands equals one million. One thousand millions equals one billion. And one thousand billions equals one trillion. A trillion can also be thought of as a million millions. My head is spinning.
As I sit here sipping coffee and clipping Kroger coupons to save 50 cents here and there, it feels quite pointless.
Though…I am calculating that if every U.S. adult saved 50 cents at the grocery store today, we would collectively save $133,500,000. That is a lot of cable knit sweaters online at Old Navy.
Happy Cyber Monday, and clip those coupons.