Nov 30 (Reuters) - Cyber Monday was set to become the
biggest online shopping day ever for the United States,
garnering up to $11.4 billion as the coronavirus pandemic
prompts consumers to stay at home and turn to the internet for
their holiday shopping needs.
The robust performance comes despite nearly two months of
offers since Amazon.com Inc held its Prime Day sales
event in October, with retailers seeking to recoup business lost
during this year's COVID-19-driven closures of malls and stores.
Estimates from Adobe Analytics showed this year's conclusion
to Thanksgiving weekend promotions would come in between $10.8
billion and $11.4 billion.
While that was down from an earlier estimate of as much as
$12.7 billion, it still easily surpasses this year's Black
Friday figure of $9 billion, which was the strongest Black
Friday online sales result to date, as well as last year's Cyber
Monday total of $9.4 billion.
Consumers are likely to keep up that spending too, said
Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights.
"While COVID-19, the elections and uncertainty around
stimulus packages impacted consumer shopping behaviors and made
this an unprecedented year in e-commerce, we expect to see
continued, record-breaking e-commerce sales from now until
Christmas," Schreiner said in a statement.
Adobe said top-selling items included hoverboards,
televisions from LG Electronics and Samsung
Electronics, Apple Inc's AirPods and
watches and the Nintendo Switch.
Amazon, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the
pandemic-induced shift away from physical stores, did not appear
to have any major technical glitches during the day.
Bill Hon, 49, a cook in Crawfordsville, Indiana, said Amazon
was still drawing his business despite offers from other firms.
"I go online a little bit and look around and do some
comparison shopping, but Amazon pretty much beats everything,"
he said.
Amazon alone has needed to add hundreds of thousands of
staff to its rosters to meet demand for home delivery during the
pandemic. Its third-quarter sales jumped 37% to $96.1 billion.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Additional
reporting by Melissa Fares and Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Edwina
Gibbs)