‘Special shopping day’ overload

It looks to be another banner year for online holiday sales, anchored by Cyber Monday on Dec. 1, when online marketers offer discount deals to get American consumers to shirk work and dot-com shop instead

IBISWorld predicts Americans will spend 15 percent more time shopping online on Cyber Monday this year than they did on the same day in 2013. Overall, holiday retail sales are predicted to rise 4.2 percent over 2013 levels, according to IHS Global Insight. Sales rose 3.1 percent year-over-year in 2012 and 2013.

“Shopping over this weekend – whether Thursday, Friday, Small-Business Saturday, Cyber-Monday — you’re doing it for the sport, more than you’re doing it for the prices,” says analyst Patty Edwards at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Seattle.

Since consumers can instantly compare prices online and find better deals, the value of these “special shopping days” for consumers is increasingly the ritual team effort among mothers, daughters, aunts, and co-workers, Edwards says.

Jessica Harper, 28, of Portland, Oregon, says special holiday shopping days devoted to hyper-consumption don’t grab her generation, with the exception of Small-Business Saturday.

“It’s becoming a little more trendy to shop local,” she says.