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The Myth of Cyber Monday

Business Week has an interesting article about the myth of "Cyber Monday". In the weeks leading up to this year's holiday shopping season, there was quite a bit of buzz regarding "Cyber Monday" which refers to the Monday after Thanksgiving in which unsatisfied brick-and-mortar shoppers go online during the work day to fulfill their unmet holiday shopping needs. I was somewhat puzzled by all the coverage surrounding this mysterious term that I didn't remember hearing during past holiday shopping seasons. It turns out this catchy phrase was invented by Shop.org, an association of online retailers, in order to help create a "Black Friday" for online retailers.

Maybe I'm a gullible shopoholic easily swayed by sneaky marketing campaigns but I found myself giving into this myth of "Cyber Monday". Both blogs and mainstream media were buzzing with how millions of Americans would spend their work day shopping instead of doing work. It made me think "Hmm.. maybe *I* should be shopping online like everyone else!" (I hope my boss doesn't read this post...)

Marketing gimmicks like "Cyber Monday" seem a little too reminiscent of the Internet bubble for me. I think online shopping is clearly here to stay. The thing I noticed about the start of this year's holiday shopping season is that many retailers were making more of their "Black Friday" deals available online; in previous years, you could not get these deals unless you physically went to the store. This is a natural progression of retailers seeing online shopping as an integral part of their overall retail strategy (rather than seeing it as something completely separate or even as a threat).

A reason why retailers would want to force people into the stores is the hope that they'd buy regularly-priced items in addition to the Black Friday superbargains. However, a well designed online retail site can do the same thing by offering "Related Products" or "Other items you might like" on the same page (e.g. Amazon.com or iTunes). Also, people will tend to spend more online because they tend to not realize how much money they're really spending when they click "Buy now!" and paying online versus physically putting things in a shopping cart and having to pull out cash or a credit card out of the wallet and hand it to the cashier.

I hope the "Cyber Monday" gimmick disappears by next year's holiday shopping season. The message should be "Avoid the crowds. Stay at home. Get all the same deals online." I think that would be a win-win situation for both consumers and retailers.

Posted by Peter S. Kim on November 29, 2005 at 10:19 AM | Email this post Permalink

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Comments

Retailers will definitely make more if they can get customers into their stores compared to online.

I took a look at this using the data of an online retailer I work with. It's certainly not the biggest, but it's big:

Does Cyber Monday Exist?

Posted by: Ed Kohler | Nov 29, 2005 11:22:04 AM

Hi,
Thanks for your comment. It's probably true that retailers currently make more if they can get customers into the stores than online, but my feeling is that this is primarily because many of them 1) don't have web sites that are optimized for pushing people to buy related products and 2) don't advertise that people can get some of the same deals online.

Maybe it is too early for retailers to divert marketing dollars away from the traditional "Black Friday" sales in favor of online shopping, but with a good online strategy, I think there's a lot of future potential growth in online retail that companies need to start looking at now.

Posted by: Peter Kim | Nov 29, 2005 11:42:51 AM

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