Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And here in the
Speaker 1: United States it is Thanksgiving, which means we here at
Speaker 1: tech Stuff are currently on holiday. I don't know about Torii,
Speaker 1: but my guess is by the time you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: I am stuffing my face with festive foods and uh.
Speaker 1: Because I don't want to leave you without an episode,
Speaker 1: I thought we would rerun an episode from a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. I think this is going to be
Speaker 1: an annual tradition about the history of Cyber Monday, because
Speaker 1: here in the US, the day after Thanksgiving is typically
Speaker 1: called Black Friday. That is a day when stores are
Speaker 1: offering tons of different sales in order to attract people
Speaker 1: to come in and buy tons of stuff. It's timed
Speaker 1: so that you know it's it's right at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the holiday shopping season, so people are trying to
Speaker 1: get their gifts all in order for their loved ones.
Speaker 1: But Cyber Monday grew out a few well many years
Speaker 1: later down the road, and this episode goes into its history.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy this episode about cyber Monday,
Speaker 1: and you know to keep a lookout for deals because
Speaker 1: they do pop up around this time of year. And
Speaker 1: I'll be back to talk with you again in a
Speaker 1: little bit today. I thought i'd changed things up a
Speaker 1: bit and talk about the history and evolution of cyber Monday.
Speaker 1: So where did this come from? And are the deals
Speaker 1: on cyber Monday really great? And I guess the answer
Speaker 1: to that second question is essentially, uh, it depends. But
Speaker 1: first let's talk about some history. So before there was
Speaker 1: cyber Monday, there was Black Friday, both in the sense
Speaker 1: that Black Friday is a thing is older than Cyber Monday,
Speaker 1: and also cyber Monday is the Monday that follows Black Friday,
Speaker 1: so technically it's true in two different senses. All right,
Speaker 1: So what is Black Friday? One of the United States,
Speaker 1: Black Friday is the friday following Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in the
Speaker 1: United States falls on the fourth Thursday of November, at
Speaker 1: least it has ever since nineteen thirty nine, when Franklin
Speaker 1: Delano Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week from the
Speaker 1: final Thursday of November. Now, since November two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: started on a Thursday. November one was a Thursday. That
Speaker 1: means that two thousand eighteen will see Thanksgiving fall as
Speaker 1: early as it can, which means November two. The latest
Speaker 1: it can fall in the month is November. Anyway, Black
Speaker 1: Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: there is an apocryphal story that says the origins of
Speaker 1: Black Friday are deeply racist and tie to the United
Speaker 1: States history with slavery. According to that story, slave traders
Speaker 1: would sell slaves at a discount on the day after
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving to help plantation owners who are going to want
Speaker 1: to purchase more slaves to do work leading up to
Speaker 1: the winter. That's a horrible, horrible thing. But the story
Speaker 1: isn't true at all. And honestly, I find it hard
Speaker 1: to believe that slave traders would respond to an increase
Speaker 1: in demand by lowering their prices. They already seem like terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible human beings. I don't think of them as being
Speaker 1: particularly altruistic. However, we can put that whole explanation aside. Anyway,
Speaker 1: If anyone tells you Black Friday is based in slavery,
Speaker 1: that is not true. The term Black Friday in relation
Speaker 1: to the day after Thanksgiving did not appear in print
Speaker 1: until the nineteen fifties. As far as we can determine.
Speaker 1: There was, however, an earlier version of Black Friday, though
Speaker 1: that was the day after Thanksgiving. That Black Friday wasn't
Speaker 1: associated with a holiday at all, but rather with a
Speaker 1: stock market crash that happened on Friday, September twenty, eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. The cause of that crash was that there
Speaker 1: were two speculators named Jay Gould and James Fisk, and
Speaker 1: together they were able to drive up gold prices way
Speaker 1: way up while they were trying to corner the market
Speaker 1: on gold on the New York Gold Exchange. They had
Speaker 1: even planted a story to convince US President Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant to stop gold sales. They had this report that
Speaker 1: it was going to hurt farmers out west. Meanwhile, they
Speaker 1: bought up as much gold as they could and that
Speaker 1: raised gold prices as a result. So they thought they
Speaker 1: were gonna be rich. They're gonna buy up the gold
Speaker 1: and then 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 millie ends of dollars of gold to be
Speaker 1: made 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: is 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 to the bubonic plague also
Speaker 1: known as the Black Death everyone would just mysteriously be
Speaker 1: sick that Friday and not show up to work. It
Speaker 1: would take another decade before we would see the name
Speaker 1: 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 said, ends
Speaker 1: with lots of material gifts. Consumerism was on the rise.
Speaker 1: A lot of people had a lot more discretionary income
Speaker 1: and a desire to spend it. So the police referred
Speaker 1: to Friday and Saturday as Black Friday and Black Saturday
Speaker 1: because of the headaches that came along with all that
Speaker 1: busy shopping, mostly in the form of stuff like traffic
Speaker 1: problems and shoplifting. Plus the fact that this rise in
Speaker 1: activity meant it was virtually impossible to get the day
Speaker 1: off if you were a Philadelphia cop, and you would
Speaker 1: probably have to put in an extra long shift to boot,
Speaker 1: so they didn't really like it. Now, in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: a 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 toward profitability or operating in the black. Thus black Friday.
Speaker 1: Now that refers to the practice of denoting losses or
Speaker 1: negative numbers in a ledger using red ink and positive
Speaker 1: 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 inventory for those
Speaker 1: products is so small that the store will no doubt
Speaker 1: sell out within minutes of opening, or both in many cases.
Speaker 1: So often these sales are tied to an effort to
Speaker 1: move older merchandise out of stores to make way for
Speaker 1: newer products. So stuff like electronics, particularly big ticket items
Speaker 1: like televisions or small appliances, tend to take up some space,
Speaker 1: and manufacturers want to come out with new models every year,
Speaker 1: and according to uh Adam Burakowski of Wirecutter, large appliances
Speaker 1: are kind of a an exception. You rarely see big,
Speaker 1: significant markdowns on large appliances, but small appliances and televisions,
Speaker 1: which can get pretty darn big these days, they can
Speaker 1: get marked off quite a bit, and most lee in
Speaker 1: order to make room for new models. Black Friday opened
Speaker 1: up a chance for stores to offload older stuff, perhaps
Speaker 1: at a discount, after sales had slowed down considerably, so
Speaker 1: by the nineteen eighties, Black Friday was established as the
Speaker 1: formal beginning of the holiday shopping season, and while some
Speaker 1: online service providers like compu Serve would introduce online shopping
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, it was a far distant second
Speaker 1: to shopping in physical stores. It had barely registered. It
Speaker 1: really wasn't until the mid nineteen nineties when Netscape one
Speaker 1: point oh incorporated the Secure Socket Layer Protocol the SSL protocol.
Speaker 1: That's when online transactions could be considered truly secure for
Speaker 1: the first time. That led to the possibility of turning
Speaker 1: the Internet, and specifically the Web, into a commerce destination.
Speaker 1: Sites like Amazon and eBay helped usher in a new
Speaker 1: era of commerce, making it practical and then desirable to
Speaker 1: shop online. While those two sites saw a lot of success,
Speaker 1: the early days of e commerce also saw a lot
Speaker 1: of businesses rush into that space without really forming a
Speaker 1: strategy around it. After the dust would settle in the
Speaker 1: wake of the dot com bubble implosion in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, companies began to take a more measured approach
Speaker 1: and e commerce started to come into its own. In
Speaker 1: two thousand five, a marketing team led by Ellen Davis
Speaker 1: at a company called shop dot Org introduced the concept
Speaker 1: of cyber Monday. This would be e commerce's response to
Speaker 1: Black Friday, the sales pitch road itself. Why would you
Speaker 1: leave your comfortable home and brave potentially bad weather and
Speaker 1: guaranteed terrible traffic to fight your way into a store
Speaker 1: only to find out that the thing you wanted to
Speaker 1: buy has already sold out. Why risk getting hurt or
Speaker 1: worse as single minded consumers shove and elbow and kick
Speaker 1: their way to get the last tickle me Elmo doll
Speaker 1: or whatever must have items happened to be on sale
Speaker 1: that year. Why not instead sit at home and order
Speaker 1: your holiday gifts online and have them either delivered to
Speaker 1: you or even to the people you plan to give
Speaker 1: gifts to. You take out the whole step of having
Speaker 1: to take the gifts to the people. Cyber Monday was born.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in just a moment, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Now, the
Speaker 1: concept of cyber Monday didn't just arrive out of the blue.
Speaker 1: For a few years leading up to two thousand five,
Speaker 1: analysts had seen a boost and online line sales on
Speaker 1: the Monday following Black Friday. They had seen this trend
Speaker 1: happening so maybe some people were late to the game
Speaker 1: and they weren't able to land a deal on Black Friday.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of them weren't able to get hold of
Speaker 1: that must have item in a physical store, so now
Speaker 1: they were looking online. But whatever the reason, by two
Speaker 1: thousand five, Cyber Monday was one of the busier online
Speaker 1: shopping 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
Speaker 1: publicity and they started to see their sales increase. So
Speaker 1: two thousand five was a good start. Analysts estimated the
Speaker 1: online retailers saw about four eight 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: point it out that certain sought after items were being
Speaker 1: really 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 subheadline that said traffic tracking services
Speaker 1: showed a fifty increase in Internet traffic at various online
Speaker 1: commerce sites on that Monday. The sought after items included
Speaker 1: stuff like the PlayStation three gaming console from Sony, Nintendo's
Speaker 1: we gaming console, and the aforementioned Elmo, though this one
Speaker 1: was the Tickle Me Elmo t m X. And by
Speaker 1: the way, just as a side note, I actually watched
Speaker 1: a video of that Elmo toy for this podcast because
Speaker 1: I'm nothing if not thorough in my research, and I
Speaker 1: didn't remember this toy. That's why I was like, what
Speaker 1: is the tickle Me Elmo t MX? How is that
Speaker 1: different from the Tickle Me Elmo, which was a doll
Speaker 1: that would laugh and vibrate like crazy whenever you activated it.
Speaker 1: So in the video I saw Elmo as a toy
Speaker 1: that could stand up. Is is actually standing and you
Speaker 1: would activate it by pressing certain points on the doll
Speaker 1: and it would start to laugh and it moves its
Speaker 1: arms and eventually it bends over like it's laughing so
Speaker 1: hard it can't stand up straight. It falls over onto
Speaker 1: the ground, and then ultimately at the end of this
Speaker 1: it stands itself back up. The best part about this
Speaker 1: story is while I was watching this, my coworker Noel Brown,
Speaker 1: who's one of the hosts of Ridiculous History, walked up
Speaker 1: behind me and he asked me what the heck was
Speaker 1: I watching. Although he didn't use those words, he he
Speaker 1: was a bit more coarse in his language, but upon
Speaker 1: explaining it, he shook his head and walked away. That's
Speaker 1: the typical response I get here at the office. In
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, online sales were up to seven hundred
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars. Then, in December two thousand seven, the
Speaker 1: United States entered what was later called the Great Recession.
Speaker 1: This was when real estate market collapsed, which in turn
Speaker 1: made mortgage backed securities issued by banks to fall in
Speaker 1: value dramatically, and that in turn threatened the solvency of
Speaker 1: various financial institutions like those banks that led to the
Speaker 1: government bailouts of banks and businesses began laying off workers
Speaker 1: and eliminating jobs. It doubled the unemployment rate in the
Speaker 1: United States until it hit ten percent. 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. An 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 Walmart an online giant Amazon. Amazon would take the
Speaker 1: number one spot according to traffic tracking services, with an
Speaker 1: 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, com 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: c NBC rather predictably reported that Black Friday and Cyber
Speaker 1: Monday had effectively gloamed together to create this mutated beast
Speaker 1: of a long shopping weekend, and we were starting to
Speaker 1: see 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 smartphones to look at cyber deals.
Speaker 1: This was a twelve percent increase from the previous year
Speaker 1: 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 starting 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 device someone might use to access it, would
Speaker 1: be well ahead of the game. That included e commerce sites,
Speaker 1: which began to invest more money in creating user interfaces
Speaker 1: for their stores, specifically for smartphones. In all, consumers spent
Speaker 1: one point four six five billion dollars in online shopping
Speaker 1: on Cyber Monday. In two thousand twelve, electronics, computer hardware,
Speaker 1: and video games all experienced huge jumps in sales gains
Speaker 1: year over year, but the top performing category according to
Speaker 1: com Score was in digital content and subscriptions. Also by
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, there was a pretty much even split
Speaker 1: between people buying stuff while surfing the web from home
Speaker 1: and those who were still on the clock at work.
Speaker 1: In two thousand thirteen, fashion websites began to finally get
Speaker 1: in on this Cyber Monday game. Clothing retailers like Old
Speaker 1: Navy started to launch their own Cyber Monday deals, taking
Speaker 1: advantage of the same shopping frenzy as other retailers. And
Speaker 1: this actually reminds us that one of the values of
Speaker 1: these days, both Black Friday and of Cyber Monday, to retailers,
Speaker 1: in large part is due to the fact that we
Speaker 1: as consumers have been conditioned to shop on those days.
Speaker 1: So many people are already in a mindset to go
Speaker 1: out there and get ready to buy stuff, and by
Speaker 1: leveraging that from the retail side and pairing a good
Speaker 1: deal or two to take advantage of it wherever you can,
Speaker 1: just makes really good business sense. In two thousand fifty,
Speaker 1: Target announced it was offering up a fifteen percent discount
Speaker 1: across all of Target dot Com for Cyber Monday, showing
Speaker 1: that the big retail businesses were really playing serious at
Speaker 1: this point and in things would really go crazy as
Speaker 1: the concept of cyber Week took hold for more retailers.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in just a moment, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor so In.
Speaker 1: According to calm Score, retailers saw eleven billion dollars in
Speaker 1: sales during cyber Week. Now that started on Monday, November
Speaker 1: and it ended on December four. Cyber Monday itself accounted
Speaker 1: for nearly two point seven billion dollars in sales all alone.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but starting on Thanksgiving Day, e
Speaker 1: commerce sites collectively saw more than one billion dollars of
Speaker 1: sales every day for eleven days straight. It drove the
Speaker 1: holiday season sales, which combs scored defined as starting on
Speaker 1: November one and indig on December four, to achieve nearly
Speaker 1: thirty eight billion dollars in sales. That's a ton of money. Also,
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, one two million people in the United
Speaker 1: States did some online shopping on cyber Monday. But on
Speaker 1: Black Friday only one hundred sixteen million Americans did any shopping,
Speaker 1: and that includes sixty seven point nine million people who
Speaker 1: were doing online shopping. So in twenty sixteen, cyber Monday
Speaker 1: pulled ahead of Black Friday as the busiest shopping day
Speaker 1: in the United States and all without having to line
Speaker 1: up in front of a store at three in the morning.
Speaker 1: In comm Score reported that consumers spent three point three
Speaker 1: six billion dollars on Cyber Monday from usk top computers,
Speaker 1: so just from desktops. According to the Verge, purchases made
Speaker 1: from mobile devices accounted for another two billion dollars in sales.
Speaker 1: And according to multiple sources, although this doesn't really match
Speaker 1: up with the com Score numbers, the collective cyber Monday
Speaker 1: sales efforts in twenty seventeen amounted to six point five
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars in sales. Now, if you look at
Speaker 1: the sales figures from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, online sales
Speaker 1: amounted to nineteen point six to billion dollars, truly an
Speaker 1: enormous sum of money. Now. According to a survey from
Speaker 1: National Retail Federation as well as a company called prosper
Speaker 1: Insights and Analytics that partnered to make this survey. Fifty
Speaker 1: eight million Americans chose to do their holiday shopping online,
Speaker 1: only fifty one million chose to shop only at physical stores,
Speaker 1: and more than sixty four million Americans did some combination
Speaker 1: of the two. So while online shopping has definitely pulled
Speaker 1: ahead of going to actual brick and mortar stores, there's
Speaker 1: still a place for those physical shops. They are not obsolete.
Speaker 1: People are still shopping there in droves, just they're doing
Speaker 1: it more online. The Wall Street Journal reported that brick
Speaker 1: and mortar stores did see a decrease of about four
Speaker 1: percent in the number of people visiting those stores in
Speaker 1: compared to the same time in so we are seeing
Speaker 1: fewer people going to these stores. It's not quite to
Speaker 1: the point where I would want to try and go
Speaker 1: out on Black Friday. I think there's still way too
Speaker 1: many people out there, but we're getting there now. There
Speaker 1: is a growing concern that by extending these deals out
Speaker 1: from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the whole Cyber week thing,
Speaker 1: and the Black Friday sales that start two weeks before Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: that these sales are going to lose their luster, and
Speaker 1: again part of what drives so much sales activity are
Speaker 1: the limitations around the sales dates. If you make items
Speaker 1: available only for a limited time at a lower price,
Speaker 1: it drives up consumer interest and it encourages shopping. You
Speaker 1: just introduced that idea in a customer's head that the
Speaker 1: thing that kind of sort of wanted is only going
Speaker 1: to be at a discounted price for a short while,
Speaker 1: and then you're more likely to move them to actually
Speaker 1: buy that thing. But if you extend the sale out,
Speaker 1: you make it less special. You dilute that effect to
Speaker 1: some extent, and the danger is that ultimately you'll start
Speaker 1: to see sales slow down or worse yet, decline as
Speaker 1: a result, because people don't feel compelled to go out
Speaker 1: and buy that thing because it's been marked down. As
Speaker 1: for what is driving the popularity of online shopping, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is opportunity. More people have access to
Speaker 1: getting online than ever before, and for many people, working
Speaker 1: at a computer is part of their job, so they
Speaker 1: can easily access us these deals whether they're at work
Speaker 1: or at home. For other people, a smartphone and a
Speaker 1: credit card is really all they need to get some
Speaker 1: shopping in, So even if employees are limiting their online shopping,
Speaker 1: just times when they're on break and they're not actually
Speaker 1: trying to snag a deal on the company dime. You
Speaker 1: would still expect to see growth in this field, just
Speaker 1: because we're seeing more penetration in computer access and internet access.
Speaker 1: The National Retail Federation predicts that in retailers will see
Speaker 1: an increase in sales between four point three percent and
Speaker 1: four point eight percent. That's actually a step down from
Speaker 1: the increase in twenty seventeen that was at five point
Speaker 1: five percent. Over the 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 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: to 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 Categories of stuff
Speaker 1: that tends to have the biggest discounts on Thanksgiving Day
Speaker 1: 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 him, 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,
Speaker 1: well that's because that television doesn't have a particularly high
Speaker 1: resolution or it's got a lot of limited features. And
Speaker 1: then you realize, well, yeah, I could buy a television
Speaker 1: for super cheap, but it's not necessarily a good TV.
Speaker 1: So you want to do that research. And just because
Speaker 1: something is being sold at a big discount doesn't always
Speaker 1: mean it's worth buying. Also, it's not a bad idea
Speaker 1: to look around to see what the price history was
Speaker 1: of certain items. Every now and then a retailer will
Speaker 1: mark up an item just before a big sale, and
Speaker 1: that way, when they put in the discount, the sale
Speaker 1: price is really not that different from the original price
Speaker 1: of the item. It could be that in October you
Speaker 1: could have bought something for five dollars, and then going
Speaker 1: into November it gets marked up to six dollars, But
Speaker 1: then the discount means that they're selling it for four
Speaker 1: seventy five dollars, So it looks like a bigger discount
Speaker 1: because the original price appears to have been six hundred,
Speaker 1: But if you go back just a little further, you
Speaker 1: see that the price was lower earlier. Just be careful.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that deal that's too good to be true is
Speaker 1: too good to be true. Online holiday sales tend to
Speaker 1: feature pretty good deals leading all the way up to
Speaker 1: Green Monday. Now, Green Monday is the second Monday in December,
Speaker 1: and it's just ten shipping days out from Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: meaning if you wait any longer, you may not have
Speaker 1: enough time for your order to get to you before
Speaker 1: the gift giving festivities occur in That day falls on
Speaker 1: December ten, and the name Green Monday actually comes from
Speaker 1: the site eBay. eBay coined the term green Monday in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. That was after they had noticed that
Speaker 1: this particular Monday had some of the highest sales of
Speaker 1: the year. In fact, it was the busiest online shopping
Speaker 1: day for quite some time. Cyber Monday would pass Green
Speaker 1: Monday in two thousand nine during the Great Recession, and
Speaker 1: then Cyber Monday would ultimately become the busiest online shopping
Speaker 1: day and Green Monday would fall quite a bit. But
Speaker 1: it's still very popular online shopping day. In fact, now
Speaker 1: I think it's climbed back up to number two. It
Speaker 1: was down in its number five for a while, but
Speaker 1: I think it's back up to number two at this point.
Speaker 1: So until Green Monday, you're likely to see some pretty
Speaker 1: good deals online. And that is the history and evolution
Speaker 1: of cyber Monday. Again, it's some combination of marketing, some
Speaker 1: combination of psychology, some combination of just trying to capitalize
Speaker 1: on already established consumer habits. It's good to know all
Speaker 1: of these elements because it informs you before you start
Speaker 1: making decisions on what you're gonna buy and who you're
Speaker 1: going to buy it from. Also, small Business Saturday is
Speaker 1: still a thing, and I still really like it. I
Speaker 1: like supporting small local businesses when I can, because you
Speaker 1: can get some really unique stuff. I know that that's
Speaker 1: redundant to say really unique, but you can get stuff
Speaker 1: that you can't find anywhere else from a lot of
Speaker 1: small businesses, and you support people who are working really
Speaker 1: hard to keep those businesses going. And might mean paying
Speaker 1: a little more for the gift, but it also probably
Speaker 1: mean the gift means a little more, so it all
Speaker 1: evens out right. I hope you enjoyed that episode about
Speaker 1: the history of cyber Monday, and uh, if you are
Speaker 1: hunting for deals, I hope that you find them. Keep
Speaker 1: it mind this year is, like last year, very challenging.
Speaker 1: They're still supply chain issues all around the world. So
Speaker 1: my recommendation is, don't have your heart set on any
Speaker 1: specific product unless you just happen to know it's in
Speaker 1: stock somewhere that you can get it. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: keep your keep your options open, and keep be patient
Speaker 1: because there are a ton of people out there trying
Speaker 1: desperately to get things on track, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of factors that are making it complicated for products
Speaker 1: to get to customers, and UH, as long as we
Speaker 1: keep that in mind, and we keep in mind that
Speaker 1: the most important thing is to let the people we
Speaker 1: love know that we love them and that hopefully they
Speaker 1: appreciate that, I think we'll get through it. Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you can, it's always good to shop locally and
Speaker 1: support your local artists and crafts people and you know,
Speaker 1: the folks who make stuff in your community. UH as
Speaker 1: the biggest impact if you can do that. I realized
Speaker 1: not everyone is in a place where that's a possibility,
Speaker 1: but if that's an option, I highly recommend looking into it.
Speaker 1: I know that for me, getting something that's like from
Speaker 1: a local crafts person has a lot more meaning than
Speaker 1: say a PlayStation five. Um, but if you have an
Speaker 1: extra PlayStation five, I'll take it because I can't find
Speaker 1: one of those anywhere. Okay, So that wraps up this episode.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is text Stuff H s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.