The Ample Evidence Behind a Christmas Shipping Surge - Bloomberg Businessweek
The wave of e-commerce that swamped FedEx and United Parcel Service just before Christmas day may have been unprecedented, but it should not have come as a huge surprise.
U.S. consumers offered plenty of hints in recent weeks that they were keen to shop from their couches. Store traffic and spending on and around the Thanksgiving holiday was dismal by many measures. But online shopping on “Cyber Monday” surged 21 percent over 2012 levels, according to IBM.
On a mass scale, that trend should have been evident to any economist or supply-chain consultant willing to zoom out from anecdotal reports and semi-scientific surveys.
The wave of e-commerce that swamped FedEx and United Parcel Service just before Christmas day may have been unprecedented, but it should not have come as a huge surprise.
U.S. consumers offered plenty of hints in recent weeks that they were keen to shop from their couches. Store traffic and spending on and around the Thanksgiving holiday was dismal by many measures. But online shopping on “Cyber Monday” surged 21 percent over 2012 levels, according to IBM.
On a mass scale, that trend should have been evident to any economist or supply-chain consultant willing to zoom out from anecdotal reports and semi-scientific surveys.