Cyber Monday Hits Sales Record, But Real Stores Are Suffering
This year’s Cyber Monday will become the biggest online shopping day in the history of the U.S. It’s good news for online stores. Physical brick-and-mortar stores, however, don’t have much reason to celebrate.
Thanksgiving weekend, the biggest shopping weekend in the country, left the brick-and-mortar stores with very little to feel thankful for. For the fourth year in a row, physical stores saw their traffic decline. Around 7 percent fewer shoppers showed up in person for Black Friday deals, while cyber shoppers broke records using their smartphones to find holiday deals, according to Forbes.
According to the survey group International Council of Shopping Centers, around 151 million people did go to brick-and-mortar stores to shop over Thanksgiving weekend.
“Feedback from the field was that Black Friday just isn’t what it used to be,” said analyst Chuck Grom.
Online retailers are on track to earn $7.8 billion for Cyber Monday alone, according to the Hill. That’s an 18.8 percent jump from 2017 sales figures, and that’s a pretty big jump.
Black Friday digital sales also spiked immediately following Thanksgiving, with a 28 percent increase in online shoppers from last year.
Actual representation of me at work today, Cyber Monday may be worse than Black Friday ? pic.twitter.com/MZAmIQAhs3
— RagerRexxy??thronesof??LL? (@april_frantz) November 27, 2018
More shoppers than ever used their smartphones for holiday shopping this year, so far, according to data. All the trends are favoring digital stores, but physical stores continue to face declines in sales and foot traffic.
Cyber Monday deals this year were more creative than ever, which may account for the huge spike in online shoppers. Every major etailer and retailer offered deals for the day, and some marijuana dispensaries even had their own special Cyber Monday deals in celebration of the day.
Black Friday is still the biggest shopping day of the year, but data shows that Cyber Monday may soon take the crown, as previously reported by the Inquisitr.
Some businesses set up websites just for Cyber Monday, including stores that operate on a local, rather than national, level.
Meanwhile, nationwide retailers like Amazon offered deals on everything from gaming systems to clothing to makeup to just about any other product you could name.
The numbers are clear: Cyber Monday is here to stay…and it may soon make Black Friday look positively antiquated.
Do you shop on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or neither…and did your shopping plans change for the first time this year? If you haven’t tried online shopping during Cyber Monday, you may want to add it to your game plan next year. After all, everyone else seems to be doing it.
