Green Monday, usually the second Monday in December, is a term coined by eBay in 2007 after it noticed a spike every year in activity on that day. Quietly it became a bigger day than Cyber Monday—fueled in large part by people’s tendency to procrastinate their gift purchasing.
However, observers of e-commerce have wondered if the growing number of retailers offering free shipping may cause Green Monday's numbers to slip.
comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni referred to that possibility earlier this year in a statement. "We know that Green Monday will rank among the top online spending days of the season, but its hold on the number one position may be slipping somewhat over time," he said.
"One possible reason is that as Free Shipping Day (which this year is Friday, December 16) gains in importance each year, online spending during the heaviest week of the season is being more evenly distributed throughout the week, whereas in the past there was a much higher concentration of spending during the early part of the week."
While a number of sites are targeting procrastinators by extending free shipping, as the New York Times noted in this blog post, Green Monday still ranked as a top day for online retailers this year.
A Huge Day
Green Monday reached $1.13 billion in spending this year, representing a 19% increase from $954 million last year, and ranking as the third-heaviest online spending day of the season after Cyber Monday ($1.25 billion) and Monday, December 5 ($1.17 billion), according to comScore.
For the holiday season-to-date through December 12, $26.8 billion has been spent online, marking a 15% increase compared to the corresponding days last year. The most recent week (ending December 11) reached a record $6.1 billion in spending, in line with the season-to-date’s 15% growth rate.
Free Shipping Will Continue
However, e-commerce sites know that free shipping is one of their differentiators between online commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores. That, along with the absence of sales tax they collect. The latter will change within a year or so, if not sooner. Free shipping, for that reason, will very likely increase and possibly become a staple during the year as well.
Weighing How and When to Offer It
Not that this is an easy decision, cost-wise, for retailers to make, writes Jennifer Farwell in this Ystoreblog post. She offers some tips, including taking care to calculate–if a retailer is going to put a floor on free shipping–what a minimum order value should be to warrant free shipping.
"Consider your packing and labor costs, and remember to calculate add-on costs such as residential delivery charges, delivery area surcharges, fuel surcharges, and cost of returns."
Another option is to offer free shipping on select items for the holidays, and on items that are overstocked, she wrote. Also, after analyzing distribution patterns, negotiate concessions with shipping carriers in target spend areas, Farwell also suggested.
Another option for retailers that can’t afford to offer blanket free shipping is to use it as an inducement to increase order size, writes Auction Bytes. "Many sellers use shipping discounts as an incentive to buyers to increase order size. …But by offering free shipping across the board, this opportunity to encourage shoppers to buy more is lost."
