Traditionally, Black Friday is reserved for in-store promotions, while today, known as Cyber Monday, is for online sales.
With cash-strapped shoppers hungry for deals, the line between the two holiday shopping events has blurred dramatically. Online retailers like Amazon, Overstock.com, Buy.com and Zappos offered Black Friday deals, and traditional brick-and-mortar stores like Target, JCPenney and Macy’s are offering promotions on their websites today.
“The layers and layers of possibilities of how to shop today is just unbelievable,” said Matt Powell, a retail analyst with Princeton Retail Analysis, a market research firm.
“If you can find a website that’s got a great price and ships for free, boy, that’s a perfect storm and you don’t even have to go out of your house,” he said.
Shoppers are expected to flock to internet retailers today and spend more than $900 million online, up $3 million from last year, according to estimates by comScore, which tracks online trends. About 70 million shoppers will be clicking from the office today, while others will log on early in the morning and at night, according to the National Retail Federation.
