'Mega Monday' will be year's busiest day for online sales

London, Dec 8 (ANI): Every Monday in December before Christmas has been dubbed as a 'Mega Monday', as it is the one day of the week when online sales are the busiest.

According to the commercial director of Visa Europe, more than two million Internet purchases take place on a Monday, reason being that when buyers fail to find what they want in the shops during the weekend they end up turning to the net.

"Monday is almost always the biggest shopping day of the week, and Mondays in December are usually huge," Sky News quoted James Roper, IMRG head, as saying.

"It was widely assumed that the fall in VAT, from 17.5 percent to 15 percent, would create a considerable shopping surge, due pent up demand caused by shoppers waiting for the lower rate.

"But it just didn't happen. Many of the smart e-retailers had already passed on the lower rate as soon as it was announced," he stated.

Chris Russell, a director of eDigitalResearch, which monitors visitor traffic to major e-retail sites, added that although a web shopping surge was expected December 8, this year's economic woes could impact the draw of online stores.

"This year may be very different," he said.

"We expect that if there is a continuation of the strong promotional activity that we saw last week by high street retailers, both in store and online, there may be a significant change in the overall pattern of online traffic for 2008," he added. (ANI)