Cyber Monday?
on 11.27.06, 06:32am in life • comments (2)
Has anyone heard of Cyber Monday before this year?
This is the first year I’ve heard the term. While it’s been all over the local TV news lately, my initial reaction was simply "huh?". Isn’t it always sales time on the Internet? and couldn’t the sales just as easily started on Black Friday, or just for fun, at 2:25am on Friday if they wanted to.
Perhaps it’s because on Monday folks are back at work surfing the internet and shopping.
According to Wikipedia, "Similar to Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year when retail stores often offer significant discounts, Cyber Monday has in recent years become a busy day for online retailers, and one in which online stores offer similarly low prices and promotions."
On the other hand, shop.org owns the "Cyber Monday Offical Website". Perhaps it is just a marketing-hype thing after all.
Brandon (November 27, 2006 @ 7:51 am)
I remember hearing it last year for the first time, but you’re not alone. Nobody in my office had heard of it either. It’s still a very new term. At least this one may make a bit of sense to the average public. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into that don’t know why Black Friday is named as such.
David Sobeski (November 27, 2006 @ 1:13 pm)
Yes, Cyber Monday has been around for at least 5 years. I recall Bezos on CNBC touting Cyber Monday and how Amazon makes a ton of money on the day workers use the Internet from work to make purchases. In fact, go look up CNBC footage for the past 5 years and you’ll seem the reference this over and over.
What is truly interesting is why this hasn’t faded. I say this because broadband penetration in the middle class (in the US) is saturated and it is continues to increase in the lower class. So, people can do this at any time - not just when they are at work. You would think that the buying habits would also shift. If I want a Wii or PS3 I should be buying online weeks before Thanksgiving. Also, if you want that Plasma or Diamond or whatever it is, you can now buy at anytime. The problem is delivery and storage. I would love it for Amazon to have a policy where they ship it to my house a couple days before the holiday. So, they store it, not me.