Black Friday and Cyber Monday Key Holiday Shopping Dates

American retailers will see a rush of approximately 137 million shoppers this weekend, as the shopping season shifts into higher gear. Thanksgiving, celebrated tonight across the nation, will be followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two days of rushing to stores to buy holiday and New Year gifts.

According to surveys conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation (NRF), millions of U.S. consumers will be heading straight to the electronics and toy sections. IDEX Online Research predicts that jewelry sales will rise 4.5 percent during the season.

Some Americans will bypass the shopping aisles and long checkout lines by shopping online, mostly from work. BIGresearch, in a survey for Shop.org, estimates that 61 million people will shop on the Internet, many of them on Cyber Monday, November 27. Last year 51.7 million people shopped online during the season period.

Cyber Monday is considered the ceremonial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season, and it is likely be even bigger this year as retailers target at-work shoppers with lunch hour promotions and special savings.

Online retailers have good reason to focus on the office crowd – 50.7 percent of consumers with Internet access at work plan to do some holiday shopping online from the office, up from 44.7 percent last year. Young adults with online access at work are the most likely to shop, with 71.5 percent of 18-24 year-olds and two-thirds 66.4 percent of 25-34 year-olds planning to browse or buy online from the office this holiday season.

“Online retailers typically see huge surges in website traffic during traditional lunch hours,” said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org.

Online retailers will unveil an array of promotions to capture the dollars spent in what has become the second biggest shopping day of the holiday season. The top selling day last year was December 12, which was one of the last days online retailers offered free standard shipping.

To help facilitate online shopping, Shop.org, whose focus is to provide a forum for retailing online executives, has launched CyberMonday.com, where online retailers have banded together to create one place where shoppers can find Cyber Monday deals.

Nearly 400 online retailers will be posting holiday promotions and special savings both for Cyber Monday and throughout the holiday season.

“When consumers started calling us last year asking which retailers were offering Cyber Monday promotions, we decided it was time to provide one central location for shoppers to find the best holiday deals,” said Silverman..

In addition to providing consumers with special savings and discounts, CyberMonday.com has a higher purpose. Retailers will set a side a percentage of sales on the site to Shop.org’s Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund, which helps students pursuing careers in eCommerce. Ray Greenly was a vice president at Shop.org before passing away from cancer in 2005.