Given the choice between shopping online on the weekend — and missing out on football games and all that — and shopping while at work, guess which most people choose?

Last year, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the peak day for online transactions, according to VeriSign Payment Services, a unit of eBay Inc.’s PayPal that processes electronic payments for about 150,000 online merchants.

… What’s behind the Black Monday sales rush? Retailers and analysts say it is fueled largely by consumers taking advantage of high-speed Internet connections at work to do their holiday shopping, sometimes after spending the long holiday weekend roaming brick-and-mortar stores, comparing prices and exchanging gift suggestions with relatives.

About 86% of Americans who use the Internet at work have broadband connections there, up from 80% a year ago, and about 64% of home users now have broadband, up from 53%, according to market research firm Nielsen//NetRatings. This year, about 52 million people said they will use Internet access at work to browse or buy gifts online, according to Shop.org.

- WSJ.com (probably requires $$$)

Alternative explanation that ignores broadband: people would rather shop than work.

(They certainly prefer to read blogs instead of updating the quarterly sales forecast — Independent Sources’ busiest hour is consistently 9am - 10am (Pacific) on weekdays. And we’re so much less obvious than a newspaper! Coming soon: Independent Sources delivered as an Excel document …)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 1:15 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Blogging, Funny ... to us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.