Shop.org, an e-commerce industry group, will today renew its effort to persuade Americans that they woke up this morning on "Cyber Monday", which it hails as "the ceremonial kick-off of the online holiday shopping season".

The term Cyber Monday was coined by Shop.org last year in an effort to transfer some of the marketing hype that surrounds the post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend to the day online sales are expected to spike as people return to work after the weekend.