Should I believe in Cyber Monday?

Don't believe the hype. The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas.

Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, "Cyber Monday" symbolizes a busy day for online retailers. The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. The idea has not survived the test of time. However, Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, sponsored by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division, in which online retailers offer low prices and promotions.

As for whether there really is more shopping done online on "Cyber Monday", in late November 2005, ComScore Networks, an e-commerce tracking firm, reported that online spending on Cyber Monday, excluding travel, was $485 million, a 26 percent increase from a year earlier. Total visits to shopping sites increased by 35 percent compared to a year earlier, according to Akamai Technologies. In late 2005, after the holidays, ecommerce sites reported that the busiest shopping days usually were between December 5-15 in a given year. For 2005, the year the term Cyber Monday was coined, the busiest online shopping day of the year in the U.S. was actually December 12, two weeks after "Cyber Monday". Shop.org's survey of its members found that their busiest day in 2005 was December 12. MasterCard's worldwide (not just U.S.) data for 2005 showed that the day with the highest amount of Web transactions processed was December 5. In November 2006, prior to the holidays, MasterCard reported that an online survey it had commissioned found that only 10 percent of Americans said they would shop on the Web on Cyber Monday.

The only people profitting from Cyber Monday are the websites with links to all the various on-line retail outlets. Those collections of links nab the website owners a royalty each time someone clicks on a link on their website to navigate to the retailer's website.


As for the retailer websites, I haven't seen any sales ads that are any more cost-saving then those they post year-round. In fact, many of the item prices are higher and they are only giving discounts by giving free shipping.

I noticed that Amazon was slow during most of the Thanksgiving Weekend.

I'm sure the Retailers of America would love to have 71% of American Households buying on Cyber Monday (and another 15% logging in from the workplace) but I march to a different drummer.