Cyber Monday to hit record sales of $9.4 billion

A record shows that U.S. shoppers are on track to spend an estimated amount of $9.4 billion on Cyber Monday, which boosts an already robust holiday shopping season.

Cyber Monday to hit record sales of $9.4 billion

According to Adobe Inc, consumers had dropped $473 million online as of 9 a.m., on track for an almost 19% increase over last year. Four “golden hours of retail” from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. bring about 30% of the day’s revenue as shoppers compete to snag the best deals.

Big e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.com Inc. will gain the most from the surge in sales. According to Adobe, the hottest sellers to date include L.O.L Surprise Dolls, Frozen 2 toys and Paw Patrol in the toy category. Samsung televisions, Apple laptops and Amazon’s line of Alexa-powered Echo devices are among top-selling electronics.

Extreme weather across the U.S. provided consumers plenty of shopping reason from the coziness of their own homes. Thanksgiving travelers were heading back from visiting family because of the storm that started in California barreled across the nation and pummeled the Northeast.

Especially, a lot of shoppers spent all day clicking online instead of lining up to buy, which resulted in Black Friday to hit a record $7.4 billion in U.S. online sales. A survey of up to 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers from Adobe Analytics shows that it was the second biggest U.S. online sales day ever, just behind 2018 Cyber Monday with $7.9 billion.

There is an increasing favor of shopper to buy online from the start of the holiday season, rather than waiting for Cyber Monday as they used to have a few years ago. They seem to have transition to purchase via mobile devices from using computers, often at the office after the holiday weekend. In particular, purchases made by smartphone on Friday accounted for $2.9 billion in sales, which was the most ever.

According to EMarketer, $135 billion will be spent on online shopping in the U.S in November and December. This represented 13.4% of all holiday sales, up from 12.3% a year ago. Also, the shopping season is shorter this year with 6 fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas in comparison with last year.