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The Internet Businesses The Almighty Buck

Web Retailers Expect Brisk 'Cyber Monday' 75

Posted by Zonk from the so-hard-to-work-up-the-energy dept.
The New York Times has a piece this morning looking at an anticipated brisk day of sales for 'Cyber Monday'. The Monday after Black Friday gained the moniker last year, based on increased online sales from 2004 and 2005. Advertisers, now once again fans of the web, have a lot to smile about as well. Specifically targeted ads have already been purchased for today, in hopes of increasing sales. This year, online retailers are expecting a jump in the range of 20% (as they did last year). From the article: "Patti Freeman Evans, an analyst with JupiterResearch, a technology consulting firm, said online sales this year would reach the $100 billion threshold for the first time. Online sales, she added, would probably constitute 6 percent of total holiday merchandise sales. Some of that online growth comes from new shoppers. According to a recent Jupiter survey, 114 million online users planned to buy something online this holiday season, a 6 percent jump from last year. The National Retail Federation said 47 percent of consumers would make at least one holiday purchase online this year, up from 36 percent three years ago."
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Web Retailers Expect Brisk 'Cyber Monday' More

Web Retailers Expect Brisk 'Cyber Monday'

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  • More free time = more sales (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) * on Monday November 27, 2006 @07:12AM (#16999836)
    It's to be expected, durning the holidays people have more time on their hands. Online sales trends [google.co.uk] in the UK always look positive around Christmas (we don't celebrate thanksgiving so using xmas as the example), it's a combination of people looking for bargains on eBay when people auction off their unwanted presents, people looking at selling their unwanted presents and spending the money they make on it in advance, people spending the money they were given as gifts and those that want to run out and get the first after Christmas bargains.

    A lot of the reason for the online growth is that people tend to be an impatient lot and as just about everywhere is shut Christmas day and many also on the 26th, people can't wait for the stores to open, also add to the people who got their first computer as a gift (hopefully a mac unless they're comfortable with Linux) may be keen to make their first online purchase.

    • It's to be expected, durning the holidays people have more time on their hands

      I wouldn't be surprised if its a bit flatter here in .au because once you get Christmas out of the way you just want to go to the beach for a week or five. Only in the northern hemisphere will you want to huddle inside with your new Wii, or whatever.

  • Reminds me of an add I seriously saw on slashdot once(one of those "top n sites" pieces of shit):

    Molestation: Top 6 sites!

    They have our number....

  • Just another myth (Score:5, Informative)

    by El Lobo ( 994537 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @07:19AM (#16999890)
    Just one problem: It's not true, at least for many online retailers. Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn't nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It's not even the first big day of the season.

    • Re:Just another myth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jalefkowit ( 101585 ) <jasonNO@SPAMjasonlefkowitz.com> on Monday November 27, 2006 @10:32AM (#17001036) Homepage
      This is what's wrong with news coverage today. Actual journalists would take a press release from an industry group proclaiming a specific day as the biggest online shopping day of the year (complete with headline-friendly name, "Cyber Monday") and look into whether the release's claims are true or not. The journalists we have just take it as gospel and pass it along (with a few brave exceptions). Beyond pathetic.
      • ..."take it as gospel??" (This from the 8th paragraph of the story, which until this point doesn't even mention Cyber Monday. (Nor does the headline.) Online retailers are taking a more coordinated approach to offering promotional sales. The National Retail Federation, and its Shop.org online division (which represents online retailers) last year dubbed the Monday after Thanksgiving "Cyber Monday," in recognition of an increase in shopping traffic akin to what offline stores experience on Black Friday. De

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nasor ( 690345 )
        At no point in the article do they claim that "Cyber Monday" is the biggest online shopping day of the year. You are complaining about something that they never actually said! In fact, the article explicitly states that it isn't the biggest online shopping day of the year.

        "Despite all that online traffic, though, Cyber Monday sales lagged those of many other holiday-season days. "

        Why should journalists bother to fact-check their articles when you don't even bother to read them?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JimRay ( 6620 )
        My colleague Bob Sullivan (an "actual journalist") takes a look at the Cyber Monday myth [msnbc.com] over at his blog, Red Tape Chronicles [msnbc.com].

    • Since Akamai is the delivery platform for more than 200 global online retail companies, it has a unique view into the daily Web traffic of these sites. (Full disclosure: I work for Akamai Technologies, Inc.)

      So far, according to the Akamai's real-time Network Usage Retail Index [akamai.com], the number of visitors per minute to online retailers is up 23% more than the average day today. Its also up 9% from the 5-month peak recorded earlier this month. Not a huge increase, but significant.

      Regardless of whether yo

  • I thought we all agreed to stop using the word cyber after the burst of the dot-com bubble.

  • Price paradox (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @07:32AM (#16999938) Homepage
    It's really too bad online retailers have had to mark up their goods 5-10% or more to pay for the ads and search engine manipulation needed to get any customers at all to their sites. If you're on the second page of a search result, you're not really in the search result at all.

    It's no wonder sale prices at stores (item + tax) have been better then online (item + ad markup + shipping) for a while now. Now online is only good if you want an old item that stores don't stock because newer things are on the shelf.

    Google should have a banner day tomorrow, everyone else is pretty much screwed one way or the other merchant and consumer alike.
    .
    • It's really too bad online retailers have had to mark up their goods 5-10% or more to pay for the ads and search engine manipulation needed to get any customers at all to their sites.

      I take it no other consumer-oriented businesses have advertising / marketing costs? There's a ad cost built in whenever you buy something from (for instance) Target, Home Depot, Borders, Walmart, McDonald's, just about any local auto dealership, Starbucks, Dell, Verizon, etc. A fairer comparison would be to compare stores'

    • Re:Price paradox - Huh?? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bangzilla ( 534214 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @10:14AM (#17000858) Journal
      You are so very wrong. Online retailers are typically much less expensive than brick and mortar as they don't have the overhead of well, brick and mortar. Take a wander around http://www.amazon.com/ [amazon.com] and you'll find the majority of the items for sale are much less than you would pay in a store. Oh, and if you live in a state (such as CA) where Amazon does not have a physical presence (e.g. shipping facility), you won't pay sales tax.

      I'd much rather stay home, avoid the mobs, keep warm, browse on-line for my holiday gifts and have them wrapped and delivered directly to family members and friends and save money at the time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by The-Bus ( 138060 )
        What muddies this argument is that online and regular retailers are providing two different types of conveniences: (most) regular retailers have a very small selection but you get your item right away and if you've never seen it you can hold it, inspect it, etc. Online retailers (many times) have huge selections but you (almost always) have to wait a few days if not a week to get something. Price, I believe, is secondary. As long as either is within spitting range of each other (say 10%) most people will ju
    • "It's no wonder sale prices at stores (item + tax) have been better then online (item + ad markup + shipping) for a while now. Now online is only good if you want an old item that stores don't stock because newer things are on the shelf."

      Yeah...not sure where you live, but, I find it almost always is more of a savings to buy online, often with free shipping, and NO tax.

      Tax here is about 9%..that adds up quickly.

      For me, most of the time, it is cheaper and more convienient to order online. That and I just

  • ... what an idiotic phrase. I hope I never learn what it means.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by deviceb ( 958415 )
      a-phreakin-men. cybermonday was created because black friday retailers want people at the stores not finding better deals online. so what to do? give them a "cyber monday" /puke

      as if mondays were not bad enough... now this
    • Sounds like someone has a case of the cyber Mondays!

  • Cyber Monday is a marketing myth (Score:4, Informative)

    by massysett ( 910130 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @08:07AM (#17000084) Homepage
    I was waiting for the same bogus "Cyber Monday" stories we got last year. It's the same myth it was last year. See Business Week. "Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn't nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It's not even the first big day of the season." This story ran *last year*.
    • Wikipedia cites Cyber Monday [wikipedia.org] as hardly being used before the 2005 season. It's suspiciously recently "invented" (2004) and has been picked up by the media, yet it sounds like something straight out of the 1995 Sandra Bullock movie, "The Net".
    • A myth in practice, also!

      My wife attempted to do her Xmas shopping on Amazon last nite, putting about 12 items in her cart, mostly CDs, but also some books, minor cookware and a board game.

      All of the items were listed "In Stock," but none of them, except for two of the CDs and the cookware, were able to be shipped before 21 Dec 2006.

      So I told her to go to Borders.com and try there. Same deal... three weeks just to ship stuff that we could have bought at Target and brought home the same day.

      WTF? If

  • Ugh.

    Here's a suggestion: STOP BUYING UNNECESARY CRAP.

    Go outside. Take a walk. Work off the extra pounds you put on stuffing yourself with obscene amounts of food last Thursday. And while you're out there, walking around, contemplate the fact that our nation is in an unwinnable war, the gap between rich and poor is expanding at a record rate (partly due to the fact that our jobs are being sold to the lowest overseas bidder), our national savings rate is negative, and we're likely funding our economic "ex

    • Go outside. Take a walk. Work off the extra pounds you put on stuffing yourself with obscene amounts of food last Thursday. And while you're out there, walking around, contemplate the fact that our nation is in an unwinnable war, the gap between rich and poor is expanding at a record rate (partly due to the fact that our jobs are being sold to the lowest overseas bidder), our national savings rate is negative, and we're likely funding our economic "expansion" with home loans and credit-card debt.

      Oh get off your high-horse. I find it somewhat unlikely that the problems of the world are going to be solved by buying less stuff, infact the immediate economic impact would be highly damaging if 'we stop buying stuff we don't need'. High savings can be just as damaging to the economy as high borrowings, cause if people aren't spending then nobody's being paid to provide the goods.

      What do you deem unnecessary crap exactly? You're writing that post on a computer, do you own a computer? Do you really need it

      • Re:Consume, Citizen. Consume! (Score:4, Funny)

        by 14CharUsername ( 972311 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @09:59AM (#17000760)

        You call that rationalizing? I'm sure you can do better than that. Try this:

        The scientists are only like 99% sure of this global warming thing, so I'll continue live in that 1% margin of error where I can drive my SUV an hour each way to work. If we run out of oil we'll just say that venezuela or canada has WMDs or something. I work hard all day browsing the internet and posting on web forums. I deserve to have brand name clothes made by children in some sweatshop somewhere. I need that cell phone made from materials mined by slaves in africa so I can text message my votes for american idol, which I watch on my Plasma HDTV. Sure I'd like to give money to charity, but you know they'll just waste it. Only my opinion matters, everyone who disagrees with me is a hypocrite. People should either be rich enough to not care about the world or poor enough to not have the means to criticize the way world works.

        Now that's how you rationalize.

      • I find it somewhat unlikely that the problems of the world are going to be solved by buying less stuff, infact the immediate economic impact would be highly damaging if 'we stop buying stuff we don't need'.

        Because the problems of the world are being solved by continuing to buy products from countries which have huge human rights abuses, suppression of free speech and religion and all the other related matters, right?

        Not buying products that we don't need from these countries would have an immediate

        • Not buying products that we don't need from these countries would have an immediate economic impact because these countries would have massive unemployment which would probably cause the people to demand changes.

          Fine, I don't disagree in principal. But it is a massive task for any one person to educate themselves as to the source of everything they may need (or want) to buy, and the working conditions there, mitigating circumstances, whatever, and make an appropriate decision. It is a huge duplication of effort and (let's be honest) never going to happen in any big way since most people do not have time.
          I know this is an unpopular point-of-view here.... but this is what we have governments for. To put appropriate p

          • All you really need is food, water, air, and shelter (in which I am including some rags as a sort of traveling shelter). Everything else is a luxury to some degree. However, providing those luxuries is a major source of human happiness (and has been since the first guy or gal figured out a way to provide the first four in a little less time than the day before). I would say that allowing people to choose which necessities and which luxuries are worth having is really the principle freedom of a liberal ec
          • How hard is it for someone to look at the sticker to see where a product is made and not buy it if it's made in China? Yes, I'm well aware that 94.872% of all products sold in this country are made in China but that does not change the fact that not buying a product made in that country would do several things:

            1) It would deprive the Chinese government of currency to continue their polices
            2) It would deprive the workers of payment for the goods they produced, thus, hopefully, leading to them making demands
      • Ah, the perils of Econ 101. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
        • Ah, the perils of Econ 101. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
          Ah, the joys of English 101. A little learning is a dangerous thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgd ( 2822 )
      Last Thursday?

      That shows a distinct lack of planning. I ensured I had enough leftovers to stuff myself with obscene amounts of food for lunch on Saturday and dinner last night as well!

      Now, if anyone needs me today, I'll be in stall #2.
    • Dear Tim (686), you must be new here. Oh, wait...
    • Interesting? This should be 'Troll', or 'Off-topic' at best...
    • I say, keep consuming, guys. I'm living on the cheap and buying American companies so that I can retire in my 30's and live off the profits of you people consuming. If we all invested for the long term and wasted less money, my investments wouldn't be so profitable...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by inKubus ( 199753 )
      Or at least buy it from a small local businessperson and not from the "machine" (ie: walmart). Go see Fast Food Nation, which really makes you feel like a pawn.

  • Sounds like a stock market crash.
    Why do people subject themselves to such crazes? We've got similar days here (.nl) once or twice a year (national holidays combined with open stores), and I avoid stores like the plague on those days.

  • Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Zadaz ( 950521 )
    Mmmm... Cyber Monkey...

    Just in time for Christmas!
  • All the people who had 4 day weekends couldn't POSSIBLY have had time to do their shopping from home during that time.
    They will go into work on Monday, fire up their computer, talk about the holiday, do no real work, and get paid by their employers to shop online all day long.

  • Cyber Monday not real (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was a /. article on this two years ago! [slashdot.org]
    http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov200 5/nf20051129_9946_db016.htm [businessweek.com]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Monday [wikipedia.org]

    It's a marketing myth. Those "market reports" are press releases. Get your head in the game.
  • Part of the reason for the monday boost is that online retailers are making no promises about shipping over Thanksgiving. So while customers stuffed full of turkey dinner have plenty of time to place orders from the comfort of their home people do not get back to work and shipping things out until Monday.

    Here's hoping my order arrives sometime in the next two weeks.

  • Unfortunately, It's All Made Up (Score:3, Informative)

    by CharlesV ( 22919 ) on Monday November 27, 2006 @09:48AM (#17000664)
    From shop.org [shop.org]:

    "Is Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day of the year?
    No. Much like the day after Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year but is not the biggest. (Last year, according to retailers, the busiest online shopping day was December 12, one of the last days of the holiday season that retailers were offering free standard shipping.) However, many retailers see Cyber Monday as the online equivalent to "Black Friday." It is the kickoff to the online holiday shopping season when retailers offer special promotions to bring customers to the web and introduce them to holiday merchandise.

    Was Cyber Monday "made up?"
    The term "Cyber Monday" was coined last year by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. However, the trend of Cyber Monday was initially recognized a number of years ago, when many retailers saw spikes in sales and traffic as consumers went back to work after the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Though Shop.org gave the Monday after Thanksgiving a name, it hardly created the trend."

    I guess if you tell people it's a big shopping day, eventually it will be. Fucking mean, though.
    • And the media hypes / shills the mediocre sales that the stores have today.
      Problem is that most people really have no clue as to what actually is a good deal, they see a sale jpeg or whatever and buy like mouthbreathers...
  • Don't save that spreadsheet. Retailers typically anticipate brisk sales around the holidays. What actually happens is not always the same.

  • The amount of SPAM in my GMail spam folder grew from 4200 to 6200 during the weekend. This means that during th weekend I received 2000 SPAM e-mails more than a month ago. I feat what the christmas shopping season brings...

  • Maybe we are expected to buy in a single day everything we don't need, and leave the rest of the year for providing the boring necessary goods.
  • Black Friday and Cyber Monday have got to be the two single most retarded nicknamed days in the entire existence of mankind...next to Fat Tuesday wrapped with just as much pointless and retarded meaning as Starbucks.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by nelsonal ( 549144 )
      Fat Tuesday has some significance as it was the last day you could eat meat (pretty much the main source of fat calories in a European diet) before Lent began (on Ash Wednesday).

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Inoyun ( 972724 )
        I understand the point of Fat Tuesday and its association with Mardi Gras and other multiple meanings such as you point out and not religion althought the name uses a religious event as a maketing tactic.

        The point I was trying to make was that having to name something for the sake of marketing the name is insulting. So, Fat Tuesday is an insult to Lent because the marketing aspect has taken over the meaning. You dont see any real meaning in Fat Tuesday except that you are encouraged to be the exact opposite
        • Well it probably gets overused as a marketing gimmick today, but I'd say the origins of Fat Tuesday justify it having a marketing use. It's been a party before you had to fast for 40 days for well over 500 years (and what is a party but a big marketing exercise in more ways than one). I'd be shocked given several theme's in the store (like the mermaid on the cup, if the Starbuck name isn't from the first mate of the Pequod, remember that before it was a national chain Starbuck's was a coffeeshop in Pike's

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