Following the sales frenzy of the British ‘Blag Tag Weekend’ (the UK’s attempt to match Black Friday) the business economy’s been jumping from strength to strength after its political downfall, but tomorrow the sales market is set to receive a festive booster-shot in what the media are labelling ‘Cyber Monday’.

Whilst most people purchase their presents in-store, the online discounts offered by retailers, coupled with ‘free delivery’ and ease of ‘click and collect’ shopping have had lured many more shoppers to complete this year’s Christmas online, with an expected £1.5 billion pounds to be spent by the end of  tomorrows Cyber Monday, according to Butler and Wood (2014). But what does this mean for businesses? IT experts are already warning that with the predicted 125,000,000 hits on online retail sites that will take place in the next 24 hours will put ‘retailers at risk of losing sales’ when websites crash under the sheer volume of cyber-shoppers.

Butler and Wood state that ‘Amazon reported that Friday was the busiest day ever on its UK website, with more than 5.5 million items ordered at a rate of 64 items a second, beating its previous record on Cyber Monday 2013 of 4.1 million items.’ – but surely a cash injection of this volume will be good for the economy? Well that depends on how many retailers supply products online as well as in-store. With the majority of shoppers switching to cyber-surf from their sofa’s, only the bigger businesses such as Argos, Amazon, Top Shop, and so on, may survive the festive period, with smaller high street outlets feeling the strain as Cyber Monday hits the economy. What are your views? Please comment below!

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/29/cyber-monday-christmas-shopping-frenzy-moves-online

Kayleigh McChambell

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Key Words: Big Data Drive, Cyber Monday, Economy Boom, Sales, England,