This year's Cyber Monday shopping event raked in a whopping $10.8 billion in sales, according to Adobe Analytics, setting a record for the largest online shopping day ever recorded, with spending increasing 15.1% from last year's previous record of $9.4 billion.
The statistics firm had originally forecasted that sales could reach highs of $12.7 billion for the online event, but consumer trends have been increasingly harder to track this year, especially as the holiday season has crept into early November following Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) delayed Prime Day.
"We are seeing strong growth as consumer continue to move shopping from offline to online this year," Adobe Digital Insights director Taylor Schreiner said, quoted by Reuters. "New consoles, phone, smart devices and TVs that are traditional Black Friday purchases are sharing online shopping cart space this year with unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes and alcohol, that would previously have been purchased in-store."
Consumers have gotten more comfortable with online shopping for items they would normally buy in-person throughout the year, which has rapidly shifted ecommerce trends years ahead of national delivery infrastructures.
According to CNBC, some in the shipping industry have raised concerns over what's being called "shipageddon"-- which is a play on the apocalyptical term armageddon--or a scenario where shipping demand exceeds capacity. Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) predicted in its holiday season forecast that online shopping trends will lead to the overall volume of packages that need to be delivered will likely exceed shipping capacity by 5% globally, which could delay on-time delivery for up to 700 million packages.
Positively, retailers and shippers have been preparing ahead of this "doomsday" holiday season situation, mostly due other retailers working to compete with Amazon's Prime Day deals. The ecommerce giant's competitors like Target (NYSE: TGT) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT) spread their holiday promotions and sales across several weeks leading up to Cyber Monday, which encouraged consumers to spend money earlier and in multiple sessions.
"The fact that holiday deals this year were pushed into early October, to align with a delayed Amazon Prime Day event, has helped the industry process a steadier flow of online transactions rather than an avalanche all at once," said Satish Jindel, president of parcel managing and logistics platform ShipMatrix, reported by CNBC.
Retailers have also encouraged consumers to buy online and pick up either curbside or in-store, offering this service for free to cut down on shipping costs and volume. Salesforce forecasts that these options will grow retailers digital revenue by an average of 90% compared to last holiday season.