Cyber Monday is the first Monday after ‘Black Friday’. Historically ‘Black Friday’, the Friday after Thanksgiving, is one of the top-3 shopping days of the year. This is because retail stores offers outstanding doorbuster deals on this day. Fortunately for shoppers who don’t find what they want on Black Friday, retailers have turned it into a weekend long event finishing off with hot online sales on the following Monday, which has become known as Cyber Monday.
Black Friday is traditionally the day when basically all retailers see profits for the year. In part this is because the traditional first quarter for companies begins in August or September. Because of this, Christmas season sales typically offset annual expenses and result in profits. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become one of the biggest Christmas shopping days and these sales put companies ‘in the black’ which means profitable months and quarters. The term Cyber Monday was coined after the 2004 holiday shopping season. On the heels of weaker than normal Black Friday sales, shoppers seemed to take advantage of high-speed Internet connections at work and place orders for items they could not find at a price they liked in stores.
Since 2005 this term, Cyber Monday has referred to the Monday immediately following Black Friday. This has not consistently been as large a sales day for online retailers as Black Friday has been for brick and mortar stores, however online stores have made use of the date to introduce numerous sales the same way traditional retailers have on Black Friday and so Cyber Monday continues to gain in popularity.
The Black Friday/ Cyber Monday shopping season has been proven to so successful for both online and offline retailers that its changed the dynamics of the whole Christmas gifts shopping season. While high volume Internet sales days have varied between early and late December, November is definitely a month more and more companies are paying attention to.
Regardless of what day or month online shoppers conduct the most sales on/in, one thing is clear, Cyber Monday is here to stay for some time, which translate to more great deals and sales for everyone!
