EVERYDAY is Black FRIDAY + CYBER Monday

 

the origins of cyber monday + black friday

 

Cyber Monday is a marketing term for e-commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online. The term was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation and Scott Silverman, and made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".    

 

Cyber Monday takes place the Monday after Thanksgiving; the date falls between November 26 and December 2, depending on the year.

According to the Shop.org/Bizrate Research 2005 eHoliday Mood Study, "77 percent of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is driving serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year (2005)".

In 2017, Cyber Monday online sales grew to a record of $6.59 billion, compared with $2.98 billion in 2015, and $2.65 billion in 2014. However, the average order value was $128, down slightly from 2014's $160

Cyber Monday has become the online equivalent to Black Friday and offers a way for smaller retail websites to compete with larger chains. Since its inception, it has become an international marketing term used by online retailers across the world.

The Cyber Monday on November 30, 2020 was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history with a total of $10.7 billion in online spending.

The term "Cyber Monday" was coined by Ellen Davis,  and was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season.   According to Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org, the term was coined based on 2004 research showing "one of the biggest online shopping days of the year" was the Monday after Thanksgiving (12th-biggest day historically).  

 Retailers also noted the most significant shopping period was December 5 through 15 of the previous year. In late November 2005, The New York Times reported: "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."    

At the time, a lot of people had slow Internet at home.  The idea for having such a holiday was created by Tony Valado, in 2003 while working at 1800Flowers.com, and coined "White Wednesday" to be the day before Thanksgiving for online retailers.^[11]

United States

In 2006, comScore reported that online spending on Cyber Monday jumped 25% to $608 million, 21% to $733 million in 2007, and 15% to $846 million in 2008.

In 2009, comScore reported that online spending increased 5 percent on Cyber Monday to $887 million and that more than half of dollars spent online at US Web sites originated from work computers (52.7 percent), representing a gain of 2.3 percentage points from last year.^[15] Buying from home comprised the majority of the remaining share (41.6 percent) while buying from international locations accounted for 5.8 percent. According to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, "comScore data have shown that Cyber Monday online sales have always been driven by considerable buying activity from work locations.

That pattern hasn't changed. After returning from the long Thanksgiving weekend with a lot of holiday shopping still ahead of them, many consumers tend to continue their holiday shopping from work. Whether to take advantage of the extensive Cyber Monday deals offered by retailers or to buy gifts away from the prying eyes of family members, this day has become an annual ritual for America's online holiday shoppers."

In 2010, comScore reported the first-ever $1 billion online shopping day ($1028M), an increase of 16 percent over 2009.  In 2011, comScore reported that Cyber Week saw US consumers spend over $6 billion online from November 28 to December 2. In 2012, comScore reported that Cyber Monday saw a 16% increase in sales from 2011, totaling $1.5 billion.  In 2013, Cyber Monday sales continued their growth and recorded their highest grossing day ever at $2.29 billion.

In 2014, the average planned expenditure was $361 per person. 46 percent of people expect to pay with credit cards and 43 percent expect to pay with debit cards. Sales are up 8.1%, according to IBM Digital Analytics. The average order is $131.66, flat with last year, though the number of transactions is up and people are buying more items on average per order.

In 2016, according to Adobe Digital Insights, Cyber Monday hit a new record with $3.45 billion, and which was the first time that online sales in one single day surpassed $3 billion in US history. The numbers went up 12.1% from the previous year.

In 2018, according to Adobe Analytics Cyber Monday hits a record $7.9 billion of online spending which is a 19.3% increase from a year ago.

In 2019, according to Adobe Analytics, Cyber Monday mobile transactions totalled $3.1 billion with total online sales reaching a record $9.4 billion.

Canada

Cyber Monday came to Canada in 2008.   The National Post featured an article published on November 25, 2010, stating that the parity of the Canadian dollar with the US dollar caused many Canadian retailers to have Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of their own. According to the article, an estimated 80% of Canadians were expected to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  Speculation has been made that with all major US television broadcasters—which are typically available to Canadians—emphasizing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for stores that are also doing business in Canada, Canadian retailers needed to mimic sales offerings in order to keep Canadian dollars from being spent in the US.

By 2011, around 80% of online retailers in Canada were participating in Cyber Monday.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Black Friday is a colloquial term for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales on Black Friday and open very early (sometimes as early as midnight, or some time on Thanksgiving Day.

Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since at least 2005.

Origin of the term Black Friday

The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday originated in Philadelphia, dating back to at least 1961, where it was used by police to describe the heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961.

Since early 21st century, there have been attempts by US-based retailers to introduce a retail "Black Friday" to other countries around the world. Retailers outside the US have attempted to promote the day to remain competitive with US-based online retailers.

 For centuries, the adjective "black" has been applied to days upon which calamities occurred. Many events have been described as "Black Friday", although the most significant such event in American history was the Panic of 1869, which occurred when financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk took advantage of their connections with the Grant Administration in an attempt to corner the gold market. When President Grant learned of this manipulation, he ordered the Treasury to release a large supply of gold, which halted the run and caused prices to drop by eighteen percent. Fortunes were made and lost in a single day, and the president's own brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, was ruined.

The earliest known use of "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving occurred in the journal, Factory Management and Maintenance, for November 1951, and again in 1952. Here it referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving, in order to have a four-day weekend. However, this use does not appear to have caught on. Around the same time, the terms "Black Friday" and "Black Saturday" came to be used by the police in Philadelphia and Rochester to describe the crowds and traffic congestion accompanying the start of the Christmas shopping season. In 1961, the city and merchants of Philadelphia attempted to improve conditions, and a public relations expert recommended re-branding the days "Big Friday" and "Big Saturday"; but these terms were quickly forgotten.

Use of the phrase spread slowly, first appearing in The New York Times on November 29, 1975, in which it still refers specifically to "the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year" in Philadelphia. Although it soon became more widespread, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1985 that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.

As the phrase gained national attention in the early 1980s, merchants objecting to the use of a derisive term to refer to one of the most important shopping days of the year suggested an alternative derivation: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving.

 When this was recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead taking in the year's profits.   The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in The Philadelphia Inquirer for November 28, 1981.

In more recent decades global retailers have adopted the term and date to market their own holiday sales.

History

The day after Thanksgiving has been regarded as the beginning of the United States Christmas shopping season since 1952. The practice may be linked with the idea of Santa Claus parades. Parades celebrating Thanksgiving often include an appearance by Santa at the end of the parade, with the idea that "Santa has arrived" or "Santa is just around the corner" because Christmas is always the next major holiday following Thanksgiving.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Santa or Thanksgiving Day parades were sponsored by department stores. These included the Toronto Santa Claus Parade, in Canada, sponsored by Eaton's, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade sponsored by Macy's. Department stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually, it just became an unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season officially started.

Thanksgiving Day's relationship to Christmas shopping led to controversy in the 1930s. Retail stores would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. For this reason, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation proclaiming Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday, meaning in some years one week earlier, in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.

 Most people adopted the President's change, which was later reinforced by an act of Congress, but many continued to celebrate Thanksgiving Day on the traditional date. Some started referring to the new date as Franksgiving.

In 2015, Amazon.com was the first to offer "Black Friday in July" deals on what they called "Prime Day", promising better deals than on Black Friday. Amazon repeated the practice in 2016 and 2017, and other companies began offering similar deals.

Analyst Marshal Cohen of The NPD Group claimed in 2020 that Black Friday is declining in favor of online shopping, and that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process. The pandemic also resulted in holiday deals being offered over a longer period of time, even as early as October.

 Fewer people shopped in person on Black Friday 2020, and most business took place online. Market research company Numerator said sellers of clothing, tools and other items considered nonessential during lockdowns were not promoted as heavily because lower production meant less available to sell.

 Adobe Analytics reported that online sales reached $9 billion in 2020, 22% more than the previous year. Foot traffic to stores fell 48% in 2020 from last year, according to RetailNext, while Sensormatic Solutions reported a 52% decrease.

"Black Thursday"

For many years, retailers pushed opening times on Black Friday earlier and earlier, eventually reaching midnight, before opening on the evening of Thanksgiving. In 2009, Kmart opened at 7 pm on Thanksgiving, in order to allow shoppers to avoid Black Friday traffic and return home in time for dinner with their families. Two years later, a number of retailers began opening at 8 pm or 9 pm, on what became derisively known as "Black Thursday". In subsequent years, other stores have followed this trend, opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving Day, or remaining open all day, beginning in the early morning hours.

Some retail and media sources have used the terms "Gray Thursday" or "Brown Thursday" instead.

The 2014 "Black Thursday" sales were generally a failure, as overall sales for the holiday weekend fell 11% compared to the previous year despite heavy traffic at the stores on Thanksgiving night.

 In response, a number of retailers decided to go back to closing on Thanksgiving for 2015, and Walmart, although it is holding firm opening on the holiday and holding its sale, also pledged to offer the same deals online for those who wished to stay home.

Most retailers abandoned efforts to hold doorbuster sales on Thanksgiving in 2020; large crowds have been forbidden under most circumstances since March due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, major retailers such as Walmart and Target had already reduced their hours and dropped 24/7 operations in response to the pandemic, and several retailers known for opening on the holiday (particularly Kmart, which has typically been open regular hours) have rapidly declined.

 According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping set a record on Thanksgiving Day 2020 with $5.1 billion in total spending, 21.5 percent higher than in 2019.

 

Black Friday around the world

United States

Black Friday is not an official holiday in the United States, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees. It is sometimes observed in lieu of another federal holiday, such as Columbus Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off. Along with the following regular weekend, this makes Black Friday weekend a four-day weekend, which is said to increase the number of potential shoppers.

The SouthPark neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, is the most trafficked area of the United States on Black Friday.

Black Friday is a shopping day for a combination of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas, it marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales including limited amounts of "doorbuster" items to entice traffic.

For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6 a.m, but in the late 2000s many opened at 4 am - 5 am. The early 2010s have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge or to simply keep up with the competition. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us began their Black Friday sales at 10 pm on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers, like Sears, Express, MK, Victoria's Secret, Zumiez, Tillys, American Eagle Outfitters, Nike, Jordan, Puma, Aéropostale, and Kmart, began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning and ran them through as late as 11 pm Friday evening. Forever 21 went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2 am Saturday morning.^[32][33] In 2011, when several retailers (including Target, Kohl's, Macy's, Best Buy, and Bealls) opened at midnight for the first time. In 2012,

 Walmart and several other retailers announced that they would open most of their stores at 8 pm on Thanksgiving Day, prompting calls for a walkout among some workers.

In 2014, stores such as JCPenney, Best Buy, and Radio Shack opened at 6 pm on Thanksgiving Day while stores such as Target, Walmart, Belk, and Sears opened at 7 pm on Thanksgiving Day.

 Three states—Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts—prohibit large supermarkets, big box stores, and department stores from opening on Thanksgiving, due to what critics refer to as blue laws.^[38][39][40] The Massachusetts ban on forcing employees to work on major holidays is not a religion-driven "blue law" but part of the state's Common Day of Rest Law.    A bill to allow stores to open on Thanksgiving Day was the subject of a public hearing on July 8, 2017.

Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.

The news media usually give heavy play to reports of Black Friday shopping and their implications for the commercial success of the Christmas shopping season, but the relationship between Black Friday sales and retail sales for the full holiday season is quite weak and may even be negative.

In 2014, spending volume on Black Friday fell for the first time since the 2008 recession. $50.9 billion was spent during the four-day Black Friday weekend, down 11% from the previous year. However, the U.S. economy was not in a recession. Christmas creep has been cited as a factor in the diminishing importance of Black Friday, as many retailers now spread out their promotions over the entire months of November and December rather than concentrate them on a single shopping day or weekend.

On April 23, 2014, ".blackfriday" joined a growing list of domain names around the world.

In 2015, Neil Stern of McMillan Doolittle said, "Black Friday is quickly losing its meaning on many fronts," because many stores opened on Thanksgiving, and a lot of sales started even earlier than that. Online shopping also made the day less important.

 A Gallup poll in 2012 has shown that only 18% of American adults approve of Black Friday, which is significantly lower than the percentage of American adults who approve of the controversial holiday Columbus Day, which is at 58%.

Canada

The large population centers on Lake Ontario and the Lower Mainland in Canada have always attracted cross-border shopping into the US states, and as Black Friday (French: Vendredi Noir) became more popular in the US, Canadians often flocked to the US because of their lower prices and a stronger Canadian dollar. After 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. Starting in 2008 and 2009, due to the parity of the Canadian dollar compared with the American dollar, several major Canadian retailers ran Black Friday deals of their own to discourage shoppers from leaving Canada.

The year 2012 saw the biggest Black Friday to date in Canada, as Canadian retailers embraced it in an attempt to keep shoppers from travelling across the border.

Before the advent of Black Friday in Canada, the most comparable holiday was Boxing Day in terms of retailer impact and consumerism. Black Fridays in the US seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer.

United Kingdom

 

In the United Kingdom, the term "Black Friday" originated within the Police and NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas. It is the day when emergency services activate contingency plans to cope with the increase in workload due to many people going out drinking on the last Friday before Christmas. Contingencies can include setting up mobile field hospitals near City Centre nightspots.

 The term has then been adopted outside those services to refer to the evening and night of the Friday immediately before Christmas, and would now be considered a mainstream term and not simply as jargon of the emergency services.

Traditionally, Boxing Day had been considered the biggest shopping day of the year in the UK. In the 2010s, several American-owned retailers such as Amazon and Asda, began to hold U.S.-style Black Friday promotions; in 2014, more British retailers began to adopt the concept, including Argos, John Lewis, and Very. That year, police forces were called to shops across Britain to deal with crowd control issues, assaults, threatening customers, and traffic issues.

In response to incidents at branches of Tesco, Greater Manchester Police's deputy chief constable Ian Hopkins said shoppers had behaved in an "appalling" fashion, and criticized shops for not making adequate security arrangements to ensure the safety of customers."

Following these incidents, some retailers began to discontinue or heavily modify their promotions, with Asda stating that it would not hold all of its sales across a single day.

In 2016, total spending on online retail sites on Black Friday was £1.23 billion, a 2.2% year-over-year increase over 2015.  In 2017, UK retail sales in November grew faster than in December for the first time

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HAPPY SHOPPING !