Last Minute Cyber Shopping Deals: Online “Free Shipping Day” is December 18, 2008

Experts are speculating that there are millions of consumers who are purposely leaving some of their holiday shopping for the last minute this year in hopes that retailers will make some Hail Mary price cuts. Online e-tailers will make these last-minute cyber shoppers happy December 18th with a semi-official, semi-organized industry-wide “Free Shipping Day.”

For most e-commerce sites, December 18th is the last day that web purchases will make it to their destinations by Christmas with standard shipping. To mark this holiday shopping season milestone, the founder of FreeShipping.org has attempted to designate December 18th as an official “Free Shipping Day,” the first of what he hopes will become an annual retail industry tradition. The idea was to create an organized promotion in which a large number of retailers offer free standard shipping for website purchases one day only. On this designated day, shoppers will get a good reason to make their final holiday purchases, and participating e-tailers will snag some last-minute sales.

The idea seems like a good one, and at first glance, the list of e-tailers who have pledged to participate in Free Shipping Day 2008 seems impressive. There are more than 100, including major retail companies like Apple, Crate & Barrel, Kohls, Kmart, Target, and Macys. But on closer inspection, about two-thirds of the e-tailers on the list have been offering free shipping deals on their websites already. So, December 18th will just be business as usual for them.

The major retail players who are truly offering one-day-only free shipping deals on December 18th include Charlotte Russe, Coldwater Creek, Office Depot, Ralph Lauren, and Urban Outfitters. The three dozen other true Free Shipping Day participants are small, relatively unknown, niche websites. The upside for these smaller sites is that they get an opportunity to catch the draft of the free publicity that the event generates because of the major retail players involved. There’s some holiday spirit in that.

It’s hard to predict whether “Free Shipping Day” will actually become a new retail industry tradition like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The amount of media attention and blog buzz the event gets will probably determine how motivated retailers will be to play in the future. For 2008 holiday shoppers, the most important thing is that the December 18th Free Shipping Day will offer some good last-minute deals and discounts. Isn’t that what we’ve all been looking for?