Walmart ‘Cyber Monday’ Starts Sunday In Rush To Boost Holiday Sales
The Monday after Thanksgiving is known as Cyber Monday, basically a Black Friday event for online shoppers who'd rather sit in their PJs and click their way to savings than battle obnoxious crowds to save $50 on a toaster. It's now the most lucrative online shopping day of the year, and just as retailers have been pushing back the beginning of Black Friday events, Walmart is kicking off its Cyber Monday sale a day early this time around.
Instead of waiting until the wee hours of the morning on Monday, Walmart will begin offering Cyber Monday discounts to online shoppers on the Sunday after turkey day. Ubiquitous online connections, be they from desktops and laptops or mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, helped prompt the new starting date.
In past years, consumers would hop on fast Internet connections at their workplace to take advantage of online deals and buy things they might have seen over the weekend. But now people generally have fast Internet access at home and on the go.
"The customers have changed by Cyber Monday hasn't changed with them," Fernando Madeira, CEO of Walmart, told Reuters. "Now everyone has Internet."
This isn't entirely new for Walmart -- it's offered a few pre-Cyber Monday deals before, though it's never gone all-out like this. Starting on Sunday, November 29 at 8 PM Eastern, Walmart will display all 2,000 online deals, which is a fourfold increase from last year.
Given Walmart's standing as the largest retailer in terms of revenue, bringing Cyber Monday to consumers a day earlier is likely to encourage competitors to follow suit. Give it a year or so and we may have to rename the event Cyber Sunday or Cyber Weekend.
Instead of waiting until the wee hours of the morning on Monday, Walmart will begin offering Cyber Monday discounts to online shoppers on the Sunday after turkey day. Ubiquitous online connections, be they from desktops and laptops or mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, helped prompt the new starting date.
In past years, consumers would hop on fast Internet connections at their workplace to take advantage of online deals and buy things they might have seen over the weekend. But now people generally have fast Internet access at home and on the go.
"The customers have changed by Cyber Monday hasn't changed with them," Fernando Madeira, CEO of Walmart, told Reuters. "Now everyone has Internet."
This isn't entirely new for Walmart -- it's offered a few pre-Cyber Monday deals before, though it's never gone all-out like this. Starting on Sunday, November 29 at 8 PM Eastern, Walmart will display all 2,000 online deals, which is a fourfold increase from last year.
Given Walmart's standing as the largest retailer in terms of revenue, bringing Cyber Monday to consumers a day earlier is likely to encourage competitors to follow suit. Give it a year or so and we may have to rename the event Cyber Sunday or Cyber Weekend.
