Cyber Monday is defined as the Monday after Black Friday. It is heralded as the kick-off to the online holiday shopping season and/or the busiest day for online retailers.
The theory hinges on the idea that shoppers make purchases upon returning to work on Monday. These shoppers might be avoiding Black Friday altogether or are buying items they were unable to purchase offline. Combine this with the natural day-of-week effect that shows Monday as the most trafficked day for retail and Cyber Monday seems to make a lot of sense.
But really, it’s a clever lie created by savvy marketers. The term was coined by Shop.org in 2005 and immediately drew media attention both good and bad. Naysayers pointed to the fact that Cyber Monday didn’t really pan out when you looked at the numbers.
Cyber Monday Statistics
It was widely reported in 2005 that Cyber Monday was historically only the 12th largest online shopping day of the year. Even a Shop.org study found that the busiest shopping day in 2005 was actually December 12th. This trend has since continued, most likely due to the end of the standard shipping window, of which many online retailers provide for free.
A comScore graph of weekly holiday sales supports the naysayers.
Clearly Cyber Monday isn’t the busiest day for online retailers.
Is Black Friday really black?
Black Friday is a big shopping day for retailers. But is it the biggest day? Not really. Snopes has the data through 2002 which shows Black Friday ranks between the 4th and 8th biggest day of the year. Black Friday did take the top spot in 2003 and 2005 according to International Council of Shopping Centers. However, I’ve seen conflicting data from other sources.
I think we can safely assume that Black Friday is generally not the biggest shopping day, but might be gaining momentum as retailers step up marketing efforts. The belief in the Black Friday myth may perpetuate the reality.
Seth Godin hits the nail on the head in All Marketers Are Liars.
Successful marketers don’t tell the truth. They don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.
Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and the share with our friends.
Within this context, Cyber Monday is a well constructed and beautiful fiction. The knee-jerk reaction is to believe the Cyber Monday story (as well as Black Friday) and most won’t do the research to validate that belief.
The fact is Cyber Monday and Black Friday are both fiction, but ones that we collectively embrace (even Google). As such, our collective suspension of disbelief may lead both closer to fact over time.
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