Week 9 EOC: What is Cyber Mondy

Around the holidays, the busiest and possibly most important day of holiday shopping is what is known as Black Friday. This refers to the Friday following Thanksgiving where retails supposedly place many of their items on significant sales in order to jumpstart the holiday shopping season. As a result of consumerism hungry for good deals for Christmas, the seasonal spirit of on-sale items spread to internet shopping, a now very important and formidable force in shopping. “For the past few years, online retailers have found that sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving have been creeping higher, giving retailers an additional reason to be jolly during the ceremonial kickoff to the holiday season.” (Shop.org).

The term “Cyber Monday” allegedly stems from the aftershock of this beginning holiday rush. During this busiest of shopping days, potential savvy shoppers became disappointed with lack of sales that met their expectations. And after coming empty that weekend, proceeded to go back to work the following Monday and surf the internet to find better deals on the items they had been looking for in the first place. “The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.” (New York Times).

Whatever your opinions of business practices on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, there are a few deals there to be had for the pick/craft consumer. Regardless of the hype associated with the supposed days of deals (since Cyber Monday had now been universally expanded into Cyber Week), it’s definitely working. Many retailers showing lackluster returns during this busy weekend, are now reporting much higher returns due to the renewed online activity. “Number crunchers estimate $1 billion was spent online Monday and $45 billion was spent at retail stores on Friday.” (PC World).
So there you have it. A hoax? A sham to rid us of our money? Perhaps. But you can’t deny that it’s working…and sometimes we even get pretty good deals!