£4000 to be spent every second in the UK by Internet shoppers

Heralded as one of the largest days of spending ever online, a huge number of Internet shoppers will be jumping onto the Internet at lunchtime on the 7th December in order to do their Christmas shopping.

Must-have products that include Susan Boyles debut album, the Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince DVD and the Apple iPhone will contribute to the £4000 per second sales that are expected all through the day.

With a prediction that shoppers will spend almost 10 percent more than the year before with sales figures estimated at being around £350 million, the director of operations at IMRG, the industrial body for retailers online, David Smith advised “It’s the biggest day in terms of sales – the first Monday in December is the big day as most people have been paid.”

In what is being referred to as ‘cyber Monday’ traffic is expected to spike between 9AM and 10AM followed by another around lunchtime with most of the purchases being made by office workers as they take advantage of the fast broadband connection speeds they have available to them.

Between now and Christmas the loss in productivity could cost businesses around £1.4 billion as 70 percent of employees stop work to do their Christmas shopping according to calculations made from a recent survey by a popular moneysaving website. Twenty percent of all workers shop online for 10 hours per week according to the results from the survey.

John Lewis is expected to make sales of around £4.5 million on the day, which is five times more than it normally makes on a Monday and its managing director, Andy Street said “Everyone decides what they are going to buy over the weekend then goes to work on Monday, gets on the computer and makes their purchases.”

Source – Guardian