Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday

  Have you recovered yet from your Black Friday whirlwind madhouse shopping bonanza?  While standing in the produce aisle, are you still fighting the urge to start throwing elbows like Charles Barkley in the paint?  Now that the chaos is over, it’s time to debunk a few myths and set the record straight.

  Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season.  It got its name because companies see it as an opportunity to skyrocket their sales into profitability, or out of “the red” and into “the black.”  And although 74% of consumers think that Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year, a recent poll conducted by MasterCard shows that Black Friday didn’t even crack the top 5 busiest shopping days of the holiday shopping season in 2005.  Early reports indicate that Black Friday sales climbed this year, up 6% from 2005, but that still may not be enough to turn the myth into a reality.  This year, with Christmas falling on a Monday, experts are predicting that the Saturday before will be the season’s biggest shopping day.  (FYI: If you’re looking to avoid the madness, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the slowest retail day of the holiday shopping season.)

  Online sales slipped on Black Friday, which I believe is to be expected.  After all, bargain-surfing in front of the computer doesn’t provide the same kind of rush that one gets from storming the doors of a department store at 5 a.m., racing to the season’s hottest item—the Elmo TMX, for example—and snatching it from the hands of a stunned, pie-eyed child.  (I know, it’s a little extreme, but it happens.)  Many people need the adrenaline rush that Black Friday shopping provides in order to put them in the shopping mood and carry them through the season. 

  And that’s exactly why the Monday after Thanksgiving has been dubbed “Cyber Monday.”  When employees return to work and are sitting in front of their computers (with a faster internet connection), online sales spike.  According to the myth, Cyber Monday is the busiest online shopping day of the holiday season.  But in reality, it was beaten last year by December 12, the last day many online retailers offer free shipping for delivery before Christmas. 

  This year, Cyber Monday may live up to the myth.  Brace yourself; the following numbers are staggering.  This year, Cyber Monday sales were up 19% from last year.  At noon, online retail sites peaked out at 2,145,558 visitors per minute.  By 7 p.m., traffic was still at over 2 million hits per minute.  (YouTube, eat your heart out.)  And that traffic was driven by good reason; many online retailers were offering door-buster deals.  Amazon, for example, was offering Xboxes for $100.  They had 1,000 available at that price.  Those sold out in 29 seconds.

  Whether you do your shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers or online, there is something to the myths of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  They may not be the busiest shopping days of the holiday season, but the deals can’t be beat. 

 -From Pulse
   November 30, 2006