The Friday after Thanksgiving is commonly referred to as Black Friday, where people go insane and destroy each others’ bodies in order to procure deals on Christmas presents. The Monday after Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is referred to as Cyber Monday, where people put off their jobs by going online and trying to find deals without the danger of bodily injury.
As much as we may feel tempted to be participants in this “herd behavior,” the Cyber Monday concept is no longer relevant. A little history:
Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation. They discovered that in 2004, online sales had risen 74%, and decided that creating a marketing day where sales could be had for online retailers would give them a little extra income. There has been an online “Cyber Monday” established every year since.
But do not feel as if you’re missing out if you neglected to sneak onto Amazon.com during work today. People actually started using the Monday after holiday to shop online at work because, in 2005, fast broadband internet wasn’t very common in most households. Most people found it easier to use their company’s faster connections to do their shopping.
Since then, internet access has soared in the United States. Approximately 77% of people in the United States have internet service. Because of this, online retailers, hoping to stem the problem of their site crashing because of too much traffic, started online sales last Monday, and it doesn’t look like their going to start increasing prices drastically in the next couple days. The same goes with most “free shipping” deals.
So, don’t worry if you missed the deals today. There are many retailers still having deals on their sites and most offer free delivery for Christmas until December 15. Two weeks, but remember to breathe.
And you can find links to my favorite online retailers on the right column of this blog
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