Gadgets and digital products are dominating promotions across local online stores this Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday takes place after the Thanksgiving weekend in the US and is traditionally when online retailers have their sales, following the bricks-and-mortar sale day: Black Friday.
The trend has spread globally in the last few years and the sale days have now come to represent the beginning of the festive shopping season.
However, this year, a lot of hype surrounded Black Friday and stores ran deals online and in-store on all products starting Friday and ending today.
To differentiate today's deals from those over the weekend, sites such as Makro, OneDayOnly and Loot are promoting tech deals exclusively.
South Africans are embracing the US tradition. So much so that local sites were not prepared for the onslaught. On Friday, it was reported DionWired, Clicks, Sportscene and Takealot all had problems as bargain-hunters rushed to the online stores to take advantage of Black Friday sales.
The sites crashed intermittently throughout the day, or gave customers problems when they tried to check-out.
The shift to online can be pinned on South Africans becoming more comfortable with shopping online and wanting to escape the festive madness that usually encapsulates shopping malls this time of year.
The Online Retail in SA 2016 report by World Wide Worx shows a steady and continual rise in online shopping, from 1996 through to the present, and well into the future, says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.
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