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Shopping for gifts online hits another record
Nov
Last Monday, known as Cyber, was once again the single biggest shopping day in the history of Amazon. More products were ordered worldwide than any other day as people looked for gifts online. They sold more than 18 million toys and more than 13 million fashion items on Cyber Monday and the Friday before combined. That Friday is known as Black and marks the start of the Christmas gift buying season as it’s the day after Thanksgiving. An Amazon spokesman said, “Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to break records on Amazon year over year.”
And what are people buying this year? The best-selling products in the USA last Monday included the Echo Dot, AncestryDNA: Genetic Testing Ethnicity, Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones for Apple devices, and the book “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. The Echo range of products, which Amazon is obviously pushing hard, sold more than 312,000 units on Black Friday alone. The top selling non-Amazon product on Black Friday was something called “The Instant Pot” which apparently is a new improved version of the old-fashioned pressure cooker that the makers claim will change the way you cook. Americans bought nearly 165,000 Instant Pots that day. As well as Ancestry’s offer another DNA testing kit from 23andMe (the company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell) was also a big seller this year as well with well over 50,000 kits sold on Black Friday alone.
If you think these numbers are staggering, buying gifts online in China is even more astonishing with Alibaba’s Single’s Day beating all four US Cyber weekend sales combined in value terms, but is important to know how to pay for this shopping and there are different options of online payment processing which are useful for this processes. Adobe tracked sales in the US from Thanksgiving Day ($3.35 billion), Black Friday ($6.2 billion), Small Business Saturday ($3.02 billion), and Cyber Monday ($7.9 billion). Together these US holiday sales over the four main selling days generated a total value of $20.47 billion. In comparison, Alibaba sold 50% more or $30.8 billion in just the 24 hours on Single’s Day (11th of November). What’s singles day… well it started off with students treating themselves as they had no partner to buy for them. They chose the date with lots of ones in it as Singles Day (11th of the 11th). If you have no one to buy you gifts online treat yourself to our Zooland funzee