First we had Black Friday, and the death that ensued. That just wasn’t enough for retailers, though. They wanted another opportunity to get in some hype and so Shop.org invented the term “Cyber Monday” for the shopping on the Monday following Black Friday. Business Week emphatically states that all is not as it seems:

Just one problem:
It’s not true, at least for many online retailers. Contrary to what the
recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn’t nearly the
biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as
the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher
comScore Networks. It’s not even the first big day of the season. 
For most online retailers, the bigger spending day of the
season to date was way back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday.
What’s more, most e-tailers say the season’s top spending day comes
much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.

Then a little later, we get this admission from one of the creators of Cyber Monday:

“It’s not the biggest day,” Silverman concedes. “But it was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement.”

What’s
next?  An entire Week of Shopping Glory, dedicated to the beauty of
commerce and all things related to it? Why do we need these special
days invented for our benefit when it is clearly not at all in our
benefit?

5 Comments

  1. That’s a fine article, Gordon, and I thank you for bringing it to our attention. The fact that the Christmas sales and advertising started before Halloween is yet another marker that the USA is all about commerce and the bottom dollar — the meaning behind the meme is lost in the midst.

  2. There was a Peanuts comic where they were joking about the advertising starting before Halloween eventually… how well they knew the world to come so many years ago!

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