Wal-Mart to begin 'Cyber Monday' sales on Sunday post Thanksgiving

Zee Media Bureau

In an interesting change to 'Cyber Monday' sales day, global retail chain Wal-Mart Stores Inc has decided that the biggest online shopping day of the year will not start on Monday but start from Sunday.

And it will start on Sunday following Thanksgiving in November.

The Cyber Monday sales would start early Monday mornings but the world's largest retailer is launch the sales deals on Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Cyber Monday's origins trace back more than a decade when people started using the high-speed Internet access at their workplaces to purchase things they saw but did not buy during trips to the shopping mall over the weekend after U.S. Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday in November.

Now, with Internet access readily available, the logic of limiting the event to a weekday no longer holds, said Fernando Madeira, chief executive of Walmart.com.

"The customers have changed but Cyber Monday hasn’t changed with them," Madeira told Reuters. "Now everyone has Internet."

Wal-Mart had a handful of 'teaser' deals on Sunday last year but this is the first time it will offer all of its Cyber Monday promotions the day before. It will launch 2,000 online-only specials at 8 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on Sunday, Nov. 29 (0100 GMT on Monday, Nov. 30), up from 500 such deals last year.

The move shows how retailers are looking to stretch what were once single-day shopping events in a bid to capture demand. A number of retailers are promoting deals for 'Black Friday' - the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally one of the busiest shopping days - weeks in advance.

The early Cyber Monday start also comes as retailers wage a bruising battle for online demand with Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), which is several times larger than Wal-Mart in e-commerce sales and is growing at a faster rate.

Industry-wide Cyber Monday sales in the U.S. will likely reach $3 billion for the first time in 2015, up 12 percent from last year, according to projections by Adobe. While Cyber Monday is expected to remain the biggest single day in terms of online revenue, Black Friday is expected to close the gap, with sales expected to rise 15 percent to $2.7 billion, Adobe said.

With Agency Inputs