Cyber Monday launches December's pre-Christmas retail spree

It is expected that Christmas shoppers in the United Kingdom will spend about £451,000 a minute this Cyber Monday.

15:44 01 December 2014

25 million shoppers from the UK are expected to do their holiday shopping this Cyber Monday. It has been predicted that £451,000 will be spent every minute as the £36.5bn month-long December spending spree gets under way.

Meanwhile, a separate study conducted by retail finance specialists Pay4Later estimates that 24.9million will join the festive shopping spree.

“Christmas 2014 is on track to be another record breaking year for online retail in the UK,” said James Miller, senior retail consultant at Experian Marketing Services.

“Continuing a trend we identified last year, Cyber Monday will no longer be the busiest pre-Christmas online shopping day, with Manic Monday expected to take the lead. With increased confidence in the standard of delivery services and click-and-collect, we expect to see people break away from traditional shopping habits.”

However, some industry experts are concerned that events such as this are creating unrealistic expectations to shoppers and may make it difficult for them to manage that expectation for future years.

“They are creating an expectation among shoppers that this [discounting] will be an annual event,” added Mercer.