By BJ Austin, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-994968.mp3
Dallas, TX – U.S. retailers are expecting a big "online" holiday shopping rush today. It's "Cyber Monday". KERA's BJ Austin reports one local marketing expert says the online shopping day is growing faster than Black Friday in-store sales.
Ed Fox, SMU marketing professor says Cyber Monday is the online equivalent of Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving when stores open to shoppers lined up for bargains. The term Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation to generate a Black Friday kind of marketing campaign with a lot of buzz and bargains. It happened after retailers observed that online sales were growing at a faster rate than in-store holiday shopping year to year.
Fox: Last year, Cyber Monday sales increased by over 16% from 2009. So, it was a pretty significant increase. And for the first time, there was a shopping day online that exceeded a billion dollars.
Fox says that rate of growth is faster than the annual Black Friday sales, but pales in volume. He says Wal Mart stores alone made a billion dollars on Black Friday last year.
Fox says sales may be down a bit this Cyber Monday - but still good.
Fox: The forecast that I'm looking at suggests that we're not going to see the same increase in Cyber Monday sales this year that we saw last year, but it still should exceed 10%.
And Fox says that's a good sign for the overall retail shopping season.