Retailer’s Cyber Monday starts this week
NEW YORK — Cyber Monday is starting earlier and earlier.
Wal-Mart Stores said Monday that it’s kicking off its so-called “Cyber Monday” deals at 11:01 p.m. CST Thursday for the first time as it aims to grab customers ahead of its rivals.
Last year, the world’s largest retailer pulled up the Cyber Monday deals to the Sunday evening after Thanksgiving.
Cyber Monday, which falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving, is typically the busiest day of the year for online shopping. The phrase was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation’s online arm, Shop. org, to encourage online buying when people returned to offices where they had high-speed Internet connections. Since then, the proliferation of smartphones has given shoppers constant Web access, and now Cyber Monday is used by retailers to pull in shoppers hungry for deals continually.
The push to start Cyber Monday deals earlier follows what’s been happening with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which used to officially kick off the holiday shopping season in stores. Over the past few years, retailers such as Wal-Mart, Macy’s and Target have started the deals earlier into Thanksgiving. And they’re now offering many of the same deals online as they do in stores on Thanksgiving.
The move comes as Wal-Mart aims to compete more aggressively with online leader Amazon. com. Wal-Mart reported last week that its online sales growth accelerated to 20.6 percent in the third quarter from its 11.8 percent pace in the prior quarter. Wal-Mart’s online business has been helped in part by its growth in product assortment. It offers 23 million products online, nearly triple from last year’s holiday season.
Wal-Mart shares settled Monday at $69.37, up 1.2 percent.
ComScore predicts online spending on Cyber Monday will jump to $3.5 billion from $3.1 billion last year.