Survey: 1 in 4 Employees Will Spend Half Their Workday Shopping on Cyber Monday
Really? A quarter of workers are going to slack off after a long holiday weekend and shop online for hours on Cyber Monday, which is Dec. 2 this year?
That’s what a survey from RetailMeNot.com says. “One in four (25 percent) working Americans plan to actually spend four hours or more shopping online for gifts during work hours that day,” the coupon site says. Most people (86 percent) will at least peek at deals while working, if not for that long.
The survey, which included responses from more than 2,000 adults, also says:
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“Employers may see more than $2.5 billion per hour in lost work productivity for the 67 percent of those surveyed who plan to shop an hour or more!” That’s based on Labor Department statistics for the number of U.S. workers and the average wage.
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More than one in five Cyber Monday sneaky shoppers have been caught browsing deals at work.
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Nearly a quarter plan to shop more for online gifts this year than last.
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Nearly half will shop stealthily on a mobile device.
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The top categories for Cyber Monday shopping are electronics, entertainment and clothes.
How realistic are these numbers? A survey last year from the Information Systems Audit and Control Association makes it sound like they might be in the ballpark. It found that employees planned to spend an average of nine hours shopping on work-issued devices and 12 hours shopping from personal devices at work during the holiday season. It’s conceivable that a large chunk of that could be on Cyber Monday.
But a new survey from CareerBuilder turned up very different results. It concluded that just 10 percent will spend more than three hours browsing deals from work — for the whole holiday season. One in five will spend between an hour and three hours.
Either way, Mashable has a list of sneaky shopping strategies for Cyber Monday.
Of course, these surveys rely on consumers to predict their shopping habits, sometimes months in advance. People may not be very good at doing that. How much time, if any, do you think you’ll spend shopping online on Cyber Monday? Comment below or on our Facebook page.
This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as 'Survey: 1 in 4 Employees Will Spend Half Their Workday Shopping on Cyber Monday'.