Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and today I thought i'd
Speaker 1: change things up a bit and talk about the history
Speaker 1: and evolution of cyber Monday. So where did this come from?
Speaker 1: And are the deals on cyber Monday really great? And
Speaker 1: I guess the answer to that second question is essentially, uh,
Speaker 1: it depends. But first let's talk about some history. So
Speaker 1: before there was cyber Monday, there was Black Friday, both
Speaker 1: in the sense that Black Friday as a thing is
Speaker 1: older than cyber Monday, and also cyber Monday is the
Speaker 1: Monday that follows Black Friday, so technically it's true in
Speaker 1: two different senses. All right, So what is Black Friday?
Speaker 1: One of the United States, Black Friday is the friday
Speaker 1: following Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in the United States falls on the
Speaker 1: fourth Thursday of November, at least it has ever since
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved the holiday
Speaker 1: up a week from the final Thursday of November. Now,
Speaker 1: since November two thousand eighteen, started on a Thursday. November
Speaker 1: one was a Thursday. That means that two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: will see Thanksgiving fall as early as it can, which
Speaker 1: means November. The latest it can fall in the month
Speaker 1: is November. Anyway, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: in the United States. Now, there is an apocryphal story
Speaker 1: that says the origins of Black Friday are deeply racist
Speaker 1: and tied to the United States history with slavery. According
Speaker 1: to that story, slave traders would sell slaves at a
Speaker 1: discount on the day after Thanksgiving to help plantation owners
Speaker 1: who are going to want to purchase more slaves to
Speaker 1: do work leading up to the winter. That's a horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible thing. But the story isn't true at all. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I find it hard to believe that slave traders would
Speaker 1: respond to an increase in demand by lowering their prices.
Speaker 1: They already seem like terrible, terrible human beings. I don't
Speaker 1: think of them as being particularly altruistic. However, we can
Speaker 1: put that whole explanation aside. Anyway, If anyone tells you
Speaker 1: Black Friday is based in slavery, that is not true.
Speaker 1: The term Black Friday in relation to the day after
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving did not appear in print until the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: As far as we can determine. There was, however, an
Speaker 1: earlier version of Black Friday, though that was not the
Speaker 1: day after Thanksgiving. That Black Friday wasn't associated with a
Speaker 1: holiday at all, but rather with a stock market crash
Speaker 1: that happened on Friday, September twenty four, eighteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: The cause of that crash was that there were two
Speaker 1: speculators named Jay Gould and James Fisk, and together they
Speaker 1: were able to drive up gold prices way way up
Speaker 1: while they were trying to corner the market on gold
Speaker 1: on the New York Gold Exchange. They had even planted
Speaker 1: a story to convince US President Ulysses S. Grant to
Speaker 1: stop gold sales. They had this report that it was
Speaker 1: going to hurt farmers out west. Meanwhile, they bought up
Speaker 1: as much gold as they could, and that raised gold
Speaker 1: prices as a result. So they thought they were gonna
Speaker 1: be rich. They're gonna buy up the gold and then
Speaker 1: they could sell it off at these elevated prices. However,
Speaker 1: President Grant found out about it, and he ordered the
Speaker 1: release of millions of dollars of gold to be made
Speaker 1: available on the market, and that caused prices to crash.
Speaker 1: Suddenly there was way more supply, and this crash ended
Speaker 1: up affecting the stock market as well. However, this was
Speaker 1: a moment of acute pain. It was a sharp depth
Speaker 1: in the stock market, thus the name Black Friday, but
Speaker 1: in the long termment that the nation was actually able
Speaker 1: to avoid a more persistent depression, so it ended up
Speaker 1: turning out better than it otherwise would have. The earliest
Speaker 1: known reference to the day after thanks Giving being Black
Speaker 1: Friday dates to nineteen fifty one from a periodical titled
Speaker 1: Factory Management and Maintenance. But it was a real page turner.
Speaker 1: But in that article, the author was describing this tendency
Speaker 1: for workers to call in sick the day after Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: and really they were just trying to make a long
Speaker 1: weekend out of the holiday because at that time it
Speaker 1: was not commonplace for most businesses to close down on
Speaker 1: both Thursday, the day of Thanksgiving, and Friday. So this
Speaker 1: piece was sort of sardonically comparing the malaise being felt
Speaker 1: by workers across the nation and to the bubonic plague
Speaker 1: also known as the Black Death. Everyone would just mysteriously
Speaker 1: be sick that Friday and not show up to work.
Speaker 1: It would take another decade before we would see the
Speaker 1: name Black Friday associated with shopping for the day after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: This would come out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The local police
Speaker 1: force there would refer to that Friday and that Saturday
Speaker 1: following Thanksgiving US both Black Friday and Black Saturday. This
Speaker 1: was because those two days had become the busiest shopping
Speaker 1: days of the year. Thanksgiving leads into the holiday season,
Speaker 1: and in post World War two America, the holiday season
Speaker 1: was beginning to be associated and has been since with
Speaker 1: lots of material gifts. Consumerism was on the rise. A
Speaker 1: lot of people had a lot more discretionary income and
Speaker 1: a desire to spend it. So the police referred to
Speaker 1: Friday and Saturday as Black Friday and blacks Saturday because
Speaker 1: of the headaches that came along with all that busy shopping,
Speaker 1: mostly in the form of stuff like traffic problems and shoplifting.
Speaker 1: Plus the fact that this rise in activity meant it
Speaker 1: was virtually impossible to get the day off if you
Speaker 1: were a Philadelphia cop, and you would probably have to
Speaker 1: put in an extra long shift to boot. So they
Speaker 1: didn't really like it now. In the nineteen eighties, a
Speaker 1: new version of the history of Black Friday popped up,
Speaker 1: and this version claimed that the name Black Friday stemmed
Speaker 1: from the fact that it was on that day that
Speaker 1: many merchants would finally see their annual figures show a profit.
Speaker 1: The idea was that the enormous amount of business on
Speaker 1: that Friday would take businesses from operating at a loss
Speaker 1: or operating in the red in other words, and push
Speaker 1: them towards profitability or operating in the black. Thus, black
Speaker 1: Friday now that refers to the practice of noting losses
Speaker 1: or negative numbers in a ledger using red ink and
Speaker 1: positive numbers using black ink. And while that's a cute story,
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, real. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: stores see more sales on the Saturday before Christmas because
Speaker 1: lots of Americans are procrastinators. But this fictional history of
Speaker 1: the origin of Black Friday took hold in the American psyche,
Speaker 1: and to go along with it, stores began holding big
Speaker 1: sales to bring more and more shoppers into their stores.
Speaker 1: And this strategy worked, and every year we would see
Speaker 1: more efforts to make it even bigger, with stuff like
Speaker 1: door buster offers, so called because those sales offer seemingly
Speaker 1: huge discounts right at opening hours and are typically those
Speaker 1: those figures, those those amounts, those discounts are only available
Speaker 1: for a very short time, or the inventor or for
Speaker 1: those products is so small that the store will no
Speaker 1: doubt sell out within minutes of opening, or both in
Speaker 1: many cases. So often these sales are tied to an
Speaker 1: effort to move older merchandise out of stores to make
Speaker 1: way for newer products. So stuff like electronics, particularly big
Speaker 1: ticket items like televisions or small appliances, tend to take
Speaker 1: up some space, and manufacturers want to come out with
Speaker 1: new models every year, and according to uh Adam Burakowski
Speaker 1: of Wirecutter, large appliances are kind of a an exception.
Speaker 1: You rarely see big, significant markdowns on large appliances, but
Speaker 1: small appliances and televisions, which can get pretty darn big
Speaker 1: these days, they can get marked off quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and mostly in order to make room for new models.
Speaker 1: Black Friday opened up a chance for stores to offload
Speaker 1: older stuff, perhaps at a discount, after sales had slowed
Speaker 1: down considerably. So by the nineteen eighties, Black Friday was
Speaker 1: established as the formal beginning of the holiday shopping season,
Speaker 1: and while some online service providers like compu Serve would
Speaker 1: introduce online shopping in the nineteen eighties, it was a
Speaker 1: far distant second to shopping in physical stores. It had
Speaker 1: barely registered. It really wasn't until the mid nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: when Netscape one point oh incorporated the Secure Socket Layer
Speaker 1: Protocol the SSL protocol. That's when online transactions could be
Speaker 1: considered truly secure for the first time. That led to
Speaker 1: the possibility of turning the Internet, and specifically the Web,
Speaker 1: into a commerce destination. Sites like Amazon and eBay helped
Speaker 1: usher in a new era of commerce, making it practical
Speaker 1: and then desirable to shop online. While those two sites
Speaker 1: saw a lot of success, the early days of e
Speaker 1: commerce also saw a lot of businesses rush into that
Speaker 1: space without really forming a strategy around it. After the
Speaker 1: dust would settle in the wake of the dot com
Speaker 1: bubble implosion in the early two thousands, companies began to
Speaker 1: take a more measured approach and e commerce started to
Speaker 1: come into its own. In two thousand five, a marketing
Speaker 1: team led by Ellen Davis at a company called shop
Speaker 1: dot Org introduced the concept of cyber Monday. This would
Speaker 1: be e commerce's response to Black Friday, the sales pitch
Speaker 1: road itself. Why would you leave your comfortable home and
Speaker 1: brave potentially bad weather and guaranteed terrible traffic to fight
Speaker 1: your way into a store only to find out that
Speaker 1: the thing you wanted to buy has already sold out.
Speaker 1: Why risk getting hurt or worse as single minded consumers
Speaker 1: shove and elbow and kick their way to get the
Speaker 1: last tickle me Elmo doll or whatever must have item
Speaker 1: happened to be on sale that year. Why not instead
Speaker 1: sit at home and order your holiday gifts online and
Speaker 1: have them either delivered to you or even to the
Speaker 1: people you plan to give gifts to. You take out
Speaker 1: the whole step of having to take the gifts to
Speaker 1: the people. Cyber Monday was born. I'll explain more in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now, the concept of cyber Monday
Speaker 1: didn't just arrive out of the blue. For a few
Speaker 1: years leading up to two thousand five, analysts had seen
Speaker 1: a boost and online line sales on the Monday following
Speaker 1: Black Friday. They had seen this trend happening, So maybe
Speaker 1: some people were late to the game and they weren't
Speaker 1: able to land a deal on Black Friday. Maybe some
Speaker 1: of them weren't able to get hold of that must
Speaker 1: have item in a physical store, so now they were
Speaker 1: looking online. But whatever the reason, by two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday was one of the big easier online shopping
Speaker 1: days of the year, but not the busiest, in fact,
Speaker 1: not even in the top ten. By two thousand five,
Speaker 1: it was more like the twelfth most popular shopping day
Speaker 1: online at that point. But the Cyber Monday marketing idea
Speaker 1: would change that. So the media, here's about this idea
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, and they jump all over this
Speaker 1: concept of Cyber Monday. And this is no surprise. News
Speaker 1: about sales tends to get a lot of attention, whether
Speaker 1: it's in print, audio, or television spots. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: countless articles and videos that lists the biggest Black Friday
Speaker 1: or Cyber Monday deals. There's a whole industry around this.
Speaker 1: There are groups that start putting out information about it
Speaker 1: before November even starts, to talk about the big Black
Speaker 1: Friday or Cyber Monday deals that are coming down the line.
Speaker 1: So media outlets were highly motivated to take this new
Speaker 1: concept and to run with it. Online retailers would get
Speaker 1: on board too, because the media coverage amounted to free publicity,
Speaker 1: and they started to see their sales increase. So two
Speaker 1: thousand five was a good start. Analysts estimated the online
Speaker 1: retailers saw about four d eighty four million dollars in
Speaker 1: sales collectively on that Monday that year. But the retailers
Speaker 1: would prepare themselves to really push for it in a
Speaker 1: big way in the years to follow. By creating promotions
Speaker 1: and sales tied to this concept of cyber Monday, they
Speaker 1: could actually increase sales dramatically over a typical shopping day online.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, CNN ran a story that
Speaker 1: pointed out that certain sought after items were being really
Speaker 1: scarce in brick and mortar stores but were available online.
Speaker 1: The article had the title for e tailors, It's Cyber Monday,
Speaker 1: and it had a ub headline that said traffic tracking
Speaker 1: services showed a fifty increase in Internet traffic at various
Speaker 1: online commerce sites on that Monday. The sought after items
Speaker 1: included stuff like the PlayStation three gaming console from Sony,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's we gaming console, and the aforementioned Elmo. Though this
Speaker 1: one was the Tickle Me Elmo t m X. And
Speaker 1: by the way, just as a side note, I actually
Speaker 1: watched a video of that Elmo toy for this podcast
Speaker 1: because I'm nothing if not thorough in my research, and
Speaker 1: I didn't remember this toy. That's why I was like,
Speaker 1: what is the tickle me Elmo t MX? How is
Speaker 1: that different from the tickle Me Elmo, which was a
Speaker 1: doll that would laugh and vibrate like crazy whenever you
Speaker 1: activated it. So in the video, I saw Elmo as
Speaker 1: a toy that could stand up is actually standing, and
Speaker 1: you would activate it by pressing certain points on the
Speaker 1: doll and it would start to laugh and it moves
Speaker 1: its arms, and eventually it bends over like it's laughing
Speaker 1: so hard it can't stand up straight. It falls over
Speaker 1: onto the ground, and then ultimately at the end of
Speaker 1: this it stands itself back up. The best part about
Speaker 1: this story is while I was watching this, my coworker
Speaker 1: Noel Brown, who's one of the hosts of Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: walked up behind me and he asked me what the
Speaker 1: heck was I watching? Although he didn't use those words
Speaker 1: he he was a bit more coarse in his language,
Speaker 1: but Upon explaining it, he shook his head and walked away.
Speaker 1: That's the typical response I get here at the office.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, online sales were up to seven
Speaker 1: hundred thirty million dollars. Then, in December two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: the United States entered what was later called the Great Recession.
Speaker 1: This was when the real estate market collapsed, which in
Speaker 1: turn made mortgage backed securities issued by banks to fall
Speaker 1: in value dramatically, and that in turn threatened the solvency
Speaker 1: of various financial institutions like those banks, that led to
Speaker 1: the government bailouts, and banks and businesses began laying off
Speaker 1: workers and eliminating jobs. It doubled the unemployment rate in
Speaker 1: the United States until it hit ten. Now. The reason
Speaker 1: I mentioned all of that is because, despite this economic downturn,
Speaker 1: online retailers would see a year over year increase in
Speaker 1: sales from two thousand seven to two thousand eight two
Speaker 1: thousand seven seven thirty million dollars two thousand eight, eight
Speaker 1: hundred forty six million dollars despite the economic downturn. Now,
Speaker 1: one possible reason for the higher number is that people
Speaker 1: weren't just looking for a good deal in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: They needed good deals. People still wanted to buy presents
Speaker 1: for friends and family, but money was tight, so sales
Speaker 1: were more important than ever, and online seemed to give
Speaker 1: the biggest access to those sales. The holiday season in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight also saw a rising battle between traditional
Speaker 1: retailer walm Art an online giant Amazon. Amazon would take
Speaker 1: the number one spot according to traffic tracking services, with
Speaker 1: an increase of twenty one percent more traffic year over year. Walmart,
Speaker 1: by comparison, only saw a six percent increase. More importantly,
Speaker 1: for Amazon, it became the most popular online destination for
Speaker 1: commerce on Cyber Monday. In two thousand nine, comm Score,
Speaker 1: which is a data analysis firm, published a report that
Speaker 1: said forty one point six percent of all online shoppers
Speaker 1: were logging in from home, but fifty two point nine
Speaker 1: percent were logging in from work. So maybe that don't
Speaker 1: want to go to work itis bubonic plague that prompted
Speaker 1: that initial article that gave us the term Black Friday
Speaker 1: for the day after Thanksgiving, maybe that now extends to
Speaker 1: everyone on the following Monday. They might be at work,
Speaker 1: but instead of actually working, they could be scouring the
Speaker 1: internet for the best deals in lowest prices. Same as
Speaker 1: it ever was. I guess Walmart would strike back against
Speaker 1: Amazon in two thousand nine when when it announced cyber
Speaker 1: Week and set the chorus for things as they are now.
Speaker 1: This extended the sales that Walmart was showing off for
Speaker 1: a full week following Thanksgiving. That would prompt other retailers
Speaker 1: to follow suit in and would also be when Cyber
Speaker 1: Monday would become the busiest online shopping day of the year,
Speaker 1: and it's been that way ever since. Was also the
Speaker 1: first year that Cyber Monday sales would top one billion dollars.
Speaker 1: But just to put things into perspective, that same year
Speaker 1: saw shoppers visit real world stores to the tune of
Speaker 1: ten point seven billion dollars in sales, So Cyber Monday
Speaker 1: was a big success, but it was still trailing far
Speaker 1: behind Black Friday and traditional stores. The next year in
Speaker 1: CNBC rather predictably reported that Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Speaker 1: had effectively gloamed together to create this mutated beast of
Speaker 1: a long shopping weekend, and we were starting to see
Speaker 1: sales extend further out in both directions from Black Friday.
Speaker 1: While this also had the effect of cannibalizing some of
Speaker 1: the sales on Friday and Monday themselves. Ultimately, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure merchants don't really care when they're selling stuff. They
Speaker 1: just care if they are selling it and how much
Speaker 1: they're able to sell. In two thousand twelve, we would
Speaker 1: see another shift in consumer behavior, one that would shape
Speaker 1: the way retailers would target customers. More shoppers, nearly twenty
Speaker 1: percent of them, began to use smartphones to look at
Speaker 1: cyber deals. This was a twelve increase from the previous
Speaker 1: year and also an indication that mobile browsing was the future.
Speaker 1: And this, by the way, was something the entire online
Speaker 1: content world was star to realize. Right around this point,
Speaker 1: anyone who worked in that world, such as yours truly
Speaker 1: was starting to think about ways to optimize content for
Speaker 1: the mobile experience. It was clear that companies that could
Speaker 1: make their online experience a positive one, no matter what
Speaker 1: sort of the device someone might use to access it,
Speaker 1: would be well ahead of the game. That included e
Speaker 1: commerce sites, which began to invest more money in creating
Speaker 1: user interfaces for their stores, specifically for smartphones. In all,
Speaker 1: consumers spent one point four six five billion dollars in
Speaker 1: online shopping on cyber Monday. In two thousand twelve, electronics,
Speaker 1: computer hardware, and video games all experienced huge jumps in
Speaker 1: sales gains year over year, but the top performing category
Speaker 1: according to com Score, was in digital content and subscriptions.
Speaker 1: Also by two thousand twelve, there was a pretty much
Speaker 1: even split between people buying stuff while surfing the web
Speaker 1: from home and those who were still on the clock
Speaker 1: at work. In two thousand thirteen, fashion websites began to
Speaker 1: finally get in on this Cyber Monday game. Clothing retailers
Speaker 1: like Old Navy started to launch their own Cyber Monday deals,
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the same shopping frenzy as other retailers.
Speaker 1: And this actually reminds us that one of the values
Speaker 1: of these days, both Black Friday and of Cyber Monday,
Speaker 1: to retailers, in large part is due to the fact
Speaker 1: that we as consumers have been conditioned to shop on
Speaker 1: those days. So many people are already in a mindset
Speaker 1: to go out there and get ready to buy stuff,
Speaker 1: and by leveraging that from the retail side and pairing
Speaker 1: a good deal or two to take advantage of it
Speaker 1: wherever you can, just makes really good business sense. In
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, Target announced it was offering up a
Speaker 1: fifteen percent discount across all of Target dot Com for
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday, showing that the big retail businesses were really
Speaker 1: playing serious at this point and in ten things would
Speaker 1: really go crazy as the concept of cyber Week took
Speaker 1: hold for more retailers. I'll explain more in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our
Speaker 1: sponsor so In. According to com Score, retailers saw eleven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in sales during cyber Week. Now that started
Speaker 1: on Monday, November and it ended on December four. Cyber
Speaker 1: Monday itself accounted for nearly two point seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: in sales all alone. And not only that, but starting
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving Day, e commerce sites collectively saw more than
Speaker 1: one billion dollars of sales every day for eleven days straight.
Speaker 1: It drove the holiday season sales, which comm Scored defined
Speaker 1: as starting on November one and ending on December four,
Speaker 1: to achieve nearly thirty eight billion dollars in sales. That's
Speaker 1: a ton of money. Also, in twenty six one two
Speaker 1: million people in the United States did some online shopping
Speaker 1: on Cyber Monday, but on Black Friday, only one hundred
Speaker 1: sixteen million Americans did any shopping, and that includes sixty
Speaker 1: seven point nine million people who were doing online shopping.
Speaker 1: So in twenty sixteen, cyber Monday pulled ahead of Black
Speaker 1: Friday as the busiest shopping day in the United States
Speaker 1: and all without having to line up in front of
Speaker 1: a store at three in the morning. In comm Score
Speaker 1: reported that consumers spent three point three six billion dollars
Speaker 1: on Cyber Monday from desktop computers, so just from desktops.
Speaker 1: According to the Verge, purchases made from mobile devices accounted
Speaker 1: for another two billion dollars in sales. And according to
Speaker 1: multiple sources, although this doesn't really match up with the
Speaker 1: comm score numbers, the collective cyber Monday sales efforts in
Speaker 1: tweventeen amounted to six point five nine billion dollars in sales. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at the sales figures from Thanksgiving through
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday, online sales amounted to nineteen point six to
Speaker 1: billion dollars, truly an enormous sum of money now. According
Speaker 1: to a survey from National Retail Federation as well as
Speaker 1: a company called Prosper Insights and Analytics that partnered to
Speaker 1: make this survey, fifty eight million Americans chose to do
Speaker 1: their holiday shopping online, only fifty one million chose to
Speaker 1: shop only at physical stores, and more than sixty four
Speaker 1: million Americans did some combination of the two. So while
Speaker 1: online shopping has definitely pulled ahead of going to actual
Speaker 1: brick and mortar stores, there's still a place for those
Speaker 1: physical shops. They are not obsolete. People are still shopping
Speaker 1: there and droves, just they're doing it more online. The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reported that brick and mortar stores did
Speaker 1: see a decrease of about four percent in the number
Speaker 1: of people visiting those stores in compared to the same
Speaker 1: time in so we are seeing fewer people going to
Speaker 1: these stores. It's not quite to the point where I
Speaker 1: would want to try and go out on Black Friday.
Speaker 1: I think there's still way too many people out there,
Speaker 1: but we're getting there now. There is a growing concern
Speaker 1: that by extending these deals out from Black Friday and
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday, the whole Cyber week thing, and the Black
Speaker 1: Friday sales that start two weeks before Thanksgiving, that these
Speaker 1: sales are going to lose their luster. And again, part
Speaker 1: of what drives so much sales activity are the limitations
Speaker 1: around the sales dates. If you make items available only
Speaker 1: for a limited time at a lower price, it drives
Speaker 1: up consumer interest and it encourages shopping. You just introduced
Speaker 1: that idea and the customer's head that the thing that
Speaker 1: kind of sort of wanted is only going to be
Speaker 1: at a discounted price for a short while, and then
Speaker 1: you're more likely to move them to actually buy that thing.
Speaker 1: But if you extend the sale out, you make it
Speaker 1: less special. You dilute that effect to some extent, and
Speaker 1: the danger is that ultimately you'll start to see sales
Speaker 1: slow down or worse yet, decline as a result, because
Speaker 1: people don't feel compelled to go out and buy that
Speaker 1: thing because it's been marked down. As for what is
Speaker 1: driving the popularity of online shopping, a lot of it
Speaker 1: is opportunity. More people have access to getting online than
Speaker 1: ever before, and for many people, working at a computer
Speaker 1: is part of their job, so they can easily access
Speaker 1: these deals whether they're at work or at home. For
Speaker 1: other people, a smartphone and a credit card is really
Speaker 1: all they need to get some shopping in. So even
Speaker 1: if employees are limiting their online shopping to just times
Speaker 1: when they're on break and they're not actually trying to
Speaker 1: snag a deal on the company dime. You would still
Speaker 1: expect to see growth in this field, just because we're
Speaker 1: seeing more penetration in computer access and internet access. The
Speaker 1: National Retail Federation predicts that in retailers will see an
Speaker 1: increase in sales between four point three percent and four
Speaker 1: point eight percent. That's actually a step down from the
Speaker 1: increase in twenty seventeen that was at five point five
Speaker 1: percent over the sixteen figures, but it still means that
Speaker 1: we're going to see more sales this year, and it
Speaker 1: would mean that the entire holiday season, not just Black
Speaker 1: Friday and Cyber Monday, but during the course of the
Speaker 1: holiday season, we will see sales between seven hundred seventeen
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars and seven twenty point nine billion dollars,
Speaker 1: getting close to a trillion dollars in sales over the
Speaker 1: holiday season. That is crazy. So now let's get down
Speaker 1: into brass tacks. How do you find good deals? Well,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, deals are happening before and after
Speaker 1: Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so those days don't really
Speaker 1: matter as much in the grand scheme of things. By
Speaker 1: the time you are listening to this episode. On the
Speaker 1: day that it publishes, deals are already going on. Amazon
Speaker 1: typically leads the charge, and I imagine part of this
Speaker 1: strategy is that they're trying to head off all the
Speaker 1: retailers at the past. They're trying to get ahead of them,
Speaker 1: get ahead of Black Friday, because there's a limited amount
Speaker 1: of money out there. Right, Shoppers are only going to
Speaker 1: spend so much this year, so Amazon wants to get
Speaker 1: ahead of all the other deals to get as much
Speaker 1: of those dollars as it possibly can. That's the deal
Speaker 1: with business, right. Online sales are actually best on Thanksgiving Day,
Speaker 1: typically with an average discount of twenty four. Categories of
Speaker 1: stuff that tends to have the biggest discounts on Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: Day include things like sporting goods, computers, video games, and clothing.
Speaker 1: So if you're shopping for any of those things, set
Speaker 1: aside some time on Turkey Day to pop online and
Speaker 1: check out some deals. But if you want to buy
Speaker 1: something like a television or a tablet, computer, or maybe
Speaker 1: a small appliance, your best bet for the biggest discount
Speaker 1: online is actually Black Friday, not Cyber Monday. But there's
Speaker 1: no need for you to jump in a car and
Speaker 1: head to the local mall. You just go online. Online
Speaker 1: sales tend to be best for those items. On the
Speaker 1: old traditional shopping day. Cyber Monday is still great for
Speaker 1: a lot of different deals, but if you're really in
Speaker 1: the market for something new, or you're looking to save
Speaker 1: the most money on gifts Thanksgiving and Black Friday, or
Speaker 1: when you should pop open the computer and hunt around
Speaker 1: a bit. It's also a great idea to do some
Speaker 1: research on the various items that are for sale. You
Speaker 1: might find that the discounted items are ones that are
Speaker 1: not really the best in their class. They might lack
Speaker 1: some interesting features. This happens a lot with television's. You'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of TVs get marked way down. Then
Speaker 1: if you do a little research, you might find out, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's because that television doesn't have a particularly high resolution
Speaker 1: or it's got a lot of limited features. And then
Speaker 1: you realize, well, yeah, I could buy a television for
Speaker 1: super cheap, but it's not necessarily a good TV. So
Speaker 1: you want to do that research. And just because something
Speaker 1: is being sold at a big discount doesn't always mean
Speaker 1: it's worth buying. Also, it's not a bad idea to
Speaker 1: look around to see what the price history was of
Speaker 1: certain items. Every now and then a retailer will mark
Speaker 1: up an item just before a big sale, and that way,
Speaker 1: when they put in the discount, the sale price is
Speaker 1: really not that different from the original price of the item.
Speaker 1: It could be that in October you could have bought
Speaker 1: something for fives, and then going into November it gets
Speaker 1: marked up to six hundred dollars, But then the discount
Speaker 1: means that they're selling it for four seventy five dollars,
Speaker 1: So it looks like a bigger discount because the original
Speaker 1: price appears to have been six hundred, But if you
Speaker 1: go back just a little further, you see that the
Speaker 1: price was lower earlier. Just be careful. Sometimes that deal
Speaker 1: that's too good to be true is too good to
Speaker 1: be true. Online holiday sales tend to feature pretty good
Speaker 1: deals leading all the way up to Green Monday. Now,
Speaker 1: Green Monday is the second Monday in December, and it's
Speaker 1: just ten shipping days out from Christmas Day, meaning if
Speaker 1: you wait any longer, you may not have enough time
Speaker 1: for your order to get to you before the gift
Speaker 1: giving festivities occur in That day falls on December ten,
Speaker 1: and the name Green Monday actually comes from the site eBay.
Speaker 1: eBay coined the term green Monday in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: That was after they had noticed that this particular Monday
Speaker 1: had some of the highest sales of the year. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was the busiest online shopping day for quite some time.
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday would pass Green Monday in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: during the Great Recession, and then Cyber Monday would ultimately
Speaker 1: become the busiest online shopping day and Green Monday would
Speaker 1: fall quite a bit. But it's still very popular online
Speaker 1: shopping day. In fact, now I think it's climbed back
Speaker 1: up to number two. It was down in its number
Speaker 1: five for a while, but I think it's back up
Speaker 1: to number two at this point. So until Green Monday,
Speaker 1: you're likely to see some pretty good deals online. And
Speaker 1: that is the history and evolution of cyber Monday. Again,
Speaker 1: it's some combination of marketing, some combination of psychology, some
Speaker 1: combination of just trying to capitalize on already established consumer habits.
Speaker 1: It's good to know all of these elements because it
Speaker 1: informs you before you start making decisions on what you're
Speaker 1: gonna buy and who you're going to buy it from. Also,
Speaker 1: Small Business Saturday is still a thing, and I still
Speaker 1: really like it. I like supporting small local businesses when
Speaker 1: I can, because you can get some really unique stuff.
Speaker 1: I know that that's redundant to say really unique, but
Speaker 1: you can get stuff that you can't find anywhere else
Speaker 1: from a lot of small businesses, and you support people
Speaker 1: who are working really hard to keep those businesses going.
Speaker 1: And might mean paying a little more for the gift,
Speaker 1: but it also probably mean the gift means a little more,
Speaker 1: so it all evens out right. If you, guys, I
Speaker 1: want to buy a very special gift for someone, why
Speaker 1: not look over at t public dot com slash tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: That's our merchandise store that's not exactly a small business,
Speaker 1: but every purchase does go to help our show and
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it. If you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episode topics of tech Stuff, send me a message.
Speaker 1: You can go to our website that is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast dot com and there you're gonna find all the
Speaker 1: different means to contact me and let me know what
Speaker 1: it is you would like me to talk about. Also,
Speaker 1: do not forget. Tech Stuff has been nominated for an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Podcast Award and votes are still coming in.
Speaker 1: You can. You can go and vote every single day
Speaker 1: if you go online and go to their website for
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio Podcast Awards. You can vote up
Speaker 1: to five times a day. In fact, you can dedicate
Speaker 1: all five of those votes to text stuff. We are
Speaker 1: nominated in the Science and Technology category, so go check
Speaker 1: that out. Look at the other shows that are nominated.
Speaker 1: Throw your love around those shows deserve it, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it has to works,
Speaker 1: dot com one