Cyber Monday: Warranted Hype?

Pfreemanevans | November 28, 2006, 07:19 PM

All those media types who are tying to pooh-pooh Cyber Monday are missing the point. Black Friday is not the busiest traffic or biggest sales day of the year for offline retailers and no one says that day is a hoax. No one claims cyber Monday is the biggest sales day or the busiest traffic day. It is a big day among big days. But, the point is that Cyber Monday represents a difference from offline sales trends. Whereas customers need to get back to work or back to their regular lives on the Monday following Thanksgiving, and, in doing so, they tended to put holiday shopping on the back burner. The heaviest online ordering times continue to be Mondays and Tuesdays from noon to two and just after 5 pm. Cyber Monday showed continued strong online traffic rather than a significant slowing that occurred in offline stores. This presented a new opportunity for retailers to perpetuate the excitement around holiday buying. Just as retailers noted an opportunity the day after thanksgiving - heavy traffic in the stores since so many people were off work and thinking about holiday present buying - they wondered, "how can we make this bigger." So too have online retailers of all types worked the same strategy, "how do we make this particular Monday bigger." The point is not to over take other days, eclipse black Friday or even diminish the potential for online sales on black Friday, but rather, the point is to capitalize on an existing customer trend. Just because cyber Monday is not the biggest day of the year, doesn't mean it doesn't have significance.