So how does Cyber Monday differ from Black Friday?
Is it just hype, another marketing ploy to lure you into more savings, offers and well just to buy more stuff?
I tried to identify the main differences between the two big shopping events during the run-up to Christmas. Black Friday has become a shopping sensation in the USA, the main shopping day for the retailers in store. Now heralded as the day most sales revenue is achieved. see more about Black Friday…more information
In 2015, Amazon sold more than 7.4 million items on Black Friday alone compared to 5.5 million in 2014, this is the biggest sales day ever in the UK. The deals and offers continue until Friday 4th December creating a whole week of opportunities to grab a bargain.
Cyber Monday – What is it?
So Cyber Monday follows the weekend after the celebrations of the US thanksgiving and falls 3 days after Black Friday. Starting in around 2005, online retailers such as Amazon and Ebay were struggling to pull the people out of the traditional “bricks and mortar” retail shops. With a clever marketing campaign, the idea was to keep them shopping online from their office computers; don’t forget back in 2005 we all had a better internet speed than at home.
Nowadays, 3 in 4 phones in the UK are Smart Phones so consumers can now buy anytime, anywhere! In the UK we are predicted to see sales of £10,915 every second online making it the 2nd biggest shopping day of the year.
How did Cyber Monday get its name?
Ellen Davis, VP of the National Retail Federation in the US, quoted the term back in 2005 (did we buy online back then? Hard to believe? ) when issuing a press release titled “Cyber Monday quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year”. The name caught on and has been used for the past decade.
In 2014 online sales on black Friday exceeded Cyber Monday for the first time in the UK, consumers spent £810m and £720m respectively. As black Friday 2015 is predicted to exceed £1 billion for 2015 it will be interesting to see what happens to Cyber Monday this year.
Personally I prefer Sofa Sunday, browsing the internet with a nice cup of tea.