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 Happy Cyber Monday, everybody.
Speaker 1: As I'm sure we're all aware, this year, being in
Speaker 1: the middle of a pandemic is a very different year
Speaker 1: than previous ones. And uh, I'm sure you all were
Speaker 1: very well aware of how that impacted Black Friday, with
Speaker 1: a lot of stores moving their sales up well into
Speaker 1: the middle of November to start, and then running them
Speaker 1: constantly in order to get those those you know, products
Speaker 1: moved when you know that you're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to do those like door buster sales of years past. Personally,
Speaker 1: I'm thankful for that, not for the pandemic. I hate that,
Speaker 1: but I'm thankful that people would not get trampled upon
Speaker 1: in an effort to get one of six televisions that
Speaker 1: have been marked down, you know, or something that's good.
Speaker 1: So I thought that since we had a holiday week previously,
Speaker 1: which means that while I'm recording this, I'm about to
Speaker 1: get ready for Thanksgiving, that we would listen to an
Speaker 1: episode I recorded and published two years ago in ten
Speaker 1: and originally published on November twenty one, The History of
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday, so that we could kind of get a
Speaker 1: understanding of where this phenomenon came from and why it exists.
Speaker 1: So enjoy this episode from the History of Cyber Monday. Today.
Speaker 1: I thought I'd changed things up a bit and talk
Speaker 1: about the history and evolution of cyber Monday. So where
Speaker 1: did this come from? And are the deals on cyber
Speaker 1: Monday really great? And I guess the answer to that
Speaker 1: second question is essentially, uh, it depends. But first let's
Speaker 1: talk about some history. So before there was cyber Monday,
Speaker 1: there was Black Friday, both in the sense that Black
Speaker 1: Friday as a thing is older than Cyber Monday, and
Speaker 1: 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 twenty two, the
Speaker 1: latest it can fall in the month is November. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Black 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 tied 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 not the day after Thanksgiving. That Black Friday
Speaker 1: wasn't associated with a holiday at all, but rather with
Speaker 1: a stock market crash that happened on Friday, September twenty four,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine. The cause of that crash was that
Speaker 1: there were two speculators named Jay Gould and James Fisk,
Speaker 1: and together they were able to drive up gold prices
Speaker 1: way way up while they were trying to corner the
Speaker 1: market on gold on the New York Gold Exchange. They
Speaker 1: had 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 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 things Giving being Black
Speaker 1: Friday dates to nineteen fifty one from a periodical titled
Speaker 1: Factory Management and Maintenance that 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 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 Frida Day and Black Saturday.
Speaker 1: This was because those two days had become the busiest
Speaker 1: shopping 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 Black 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 pushed
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
Speaker 1: psyche had to go along with it. Stores began holding
Speaker 1: big 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 H. Tam 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 mostly in order
Speaker 1: to make room for new models. Black Friday opened up
Speaker 1: a chance for stores to offload older stuff, perhaps at
Speaker 1: a discount, after sales had slowed down considerably. So By
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, Black Friday was established as the formal
Speaker 1: beginning of the holiday shopping season, and while some online
Speaker 1: service providers like compu Serve would introduce online shopping in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, it was a far distant second to
Speaker 1: shopping in physical stores. It had barely registered. It really
Speaker 1: wasn't until the mid nineteen nineties when Netscape one point
Speaker 1: oh incorporated the Secure Socket Layer Protocol the SSL protocol.
Speaker 1: That's when online transaction 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 happening.
Speaker 1: So maybe some people were late to the game and
Speaker 1: 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 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 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: 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 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 Mo 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 TMX? How is that different
Speaker 1: from the Tickle Me Elmo, which was a doll that
Speaker 1: 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 actually standing, and you would
Speaker 1: activate it by pressing certain points on the doll and
Speaker 1: it would start to laugh and it moves its arms
Speaker 1: and eventually it bends over like it's laughing so hard
Speaker 1: it can't stand up straight. It falls over onto the ground,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately at the end of this it stands
Speaker 1: itself back up. The best part about this story is
Speaker 1: while I was watching this, my coworker Noel Brown, who's
Speaker 1: one of the hosts of Ridiculous History, walked up behind
Speaker 1: me and he asked me what the heck was I watching.
Speaker 1: Although he didn't use those words. He he was a
Speaker 1: bit more coarse in his language, but upon explaining it,
Speaker 1: he shook his head and walked away. That's the typical
Speaker 1: response I get here at the office. In two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: online sales were up to seven hundred thirty million dollars. Then,
Speaker 1: in December two thousand seven, the United States entered what
Speaker 1: was later called the Great Recession. This was when the
Speaker 1: real estate market collapsed, which in turn made mortgage backed
Speaker 1: securities issued by banks to fall in value dramatically, and
Speaker 1: that in turn threatened the solvency of various financial institutions
Speaker 1: like those banks, that led to the government bailouts of
Speaker 1: banks and businesses began laying off workers and eliminating jobs.
Speaker 1: It doubled the unemployment rate in the United States until
Speaker 1: it hit ten. Now, the reason I mentioned all of
Speaker 1: that is because, despite this economic downturn, online retailers would
Speaker 1: see a year over year increase in sales from two
Speaker 1: thousand seven to two thousand eight two thousand seven seven
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars two thousand eight, eight hundred forty six
Speaker 1: million dollars despite the economic downturn. Now, one possible reason
Speaker 1: for the higher number is that people weren't just looking
Speaker 1: for a good deal in two thousand eight, they needed
Speaker 1: good deals. People still wanted to buy presents for friends
Speaker 1: and family, but money was tight, so sales were more
Speaker 1: important than ever. An online seemed to give the biggest
Speaker 1: access to those sales. The holiday season in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight also saw a rising battle between traditional retailer Walmart
Speaker 1: and online giant Amazon. Amazon would take the number one
Speaker 1: spot according to traffic tracking services, with an increase of
Speaker 1: twenty one more traffic year over year. Walmart, by comparison,
Speaker 1: only saw a six percent increase. More importantly, for Amazon,
Speaker 1: it became the most popular online destination for commerce on
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday. In two thousand nine, com Score, which is
Speaker 1: a data analysis firm, published a report that said forty
Speaker 1: one point six percent of all online shoppers were logging
Speaker 1: in from home, but fifty two point nine we're logging
Speaker 1: in from work. So maybe that don't want to go
Speaker 1: to work itis bubonic plague that prompted that initial article
Speaker 1: that gave us the term Black Friday for the day
Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving, maybe that now extends to everyone on the
Speaker 1: following Monday. They might be at work, but instead of
Speaker 1: actually working, they could be scouring the Internet for the
Speaker 1: best deals in lowest prices, same as it ever was.
Speaker 1: I guess Walmart would strike back against Amazon in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine when when it announced cyber Week and set
Speaker 1: the chorus for things as they are now. This extended
Speaker 1: the sales that Walmart was showing off for a full
Speaker 1: week following Thanksgiving. That would prompt other retailers to follow
Speaker 1: suit in and would also be when Cyber Monday would
Speaker 1: become the busiest online shopping day of the year, and
Speaker 1: it's been that way ever since. Ten 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 link 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: of them, began to use smartphones to look at cyber deals.
Speaker 1: This was a twelve increase from the previous year and
Speaker 1: also an indication that mobile browsing was the future. And this,
Speaker 1: by the way, was something the entire online content world
Speaker 1: was starting to realize. Right around this point. Anyone who
Speaker 1: worked in that world, such as yours, truly was starting
Speaker 1: to think about ways to optimize content for the mobile experience.
Speaker 1: It was clear that companies that could make their online
Speaker 1: experience a positive one, no matter what sort of device
Speaker 1: someone might use to access it, would be well ahead
Speaker 1: of the game. That included e commerce sites, which began
Speaker 1: to invest more money in creating user interfaces for their stores,
Speaker 1: specifically for smartphones. In all, consumers spent one point four
Speaker 1: six five billion dollars in online shopping on Cyber Monday.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, Electronics, computer hardware, and video games
Speaker 1: all experienced huge jumps in sales gains year over year,
Speaker 1: but the top performing category according to com Score was
Speaker 1: in digital content and subscriptions. Also by two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: there was a pretty much even split between people buying
Speaker 1: stuff while surfing the web from home and those who
Speaker 1: were still on the clock at work. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: fashion websites began to finally get in on this Cyber
Speaker 1: Monday game. Clothing retailers like Old Navy started to launch
Speaker 1: their own Cyber Monday deals, taking advantage of the same
Speaker 1: shopping frenzy as other retailers. And this actually reminds us
Speaker 1: that one of the values of these days, both Black
Speaker 1: Friday and of Cyber Monday to retailers, in large part
Speaker 1: is due to the fact that we as consumers have
Speaker 1: been conditioned to shop on those days. So many people
Speaker 1: are already in a mindset to go out there and
Speaker 1: get ready to buy stuff, and by leveraging that from
Speaker 1: the retail side and pairing a good deal or two
Speaker 1: to take advantage of it wherever you can just makes
Speaker 1: really good business sense. In two thousand fifteen, Target announced
Speaker 1: it was offering up a fifteen percent discount across all
Speaker 1: of Target dot com for Cyber Monday, showing that the
Speaker 1: big retail businesses were really playing serious at this point
Speaker 1: and in things would really go crazy as the concept
Speaker 1: of cyber Week took hold for more retailers. I'll explain
Speaker 1: more in just a moment, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor so In. According to
Speaker 1: com Score, retailers saw eleven billion dollars in sales during
Speaker 1: cyber Week. Now that started on Monday, November and it
Speaker 1: ended on December four. Cyber Monday itself accounted for nearly
Speaker 1: two point seven billion dollars in sales all alone. And
Speaker 1: not only that, but starting on Thanksgiving Day, e commerce
Speaker 1: sites collectively saw more than one billion dollars of sales
Speaker 1: every day for eleven days straight. It drove the holiday
Speaker 1: season sales, which combs scored defined as starting on November
Speaker 1: one and indian on December four, to achieve nearly thirty
Speaker 1: 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 desktop computers, so
Speaker 1: just from desktops. According to the Verge, purchases made from
Speaker 1: 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 seventeen amounted to six point five nine
Speaker 1: billion dollars in sales. Now, if you look at the
Speaker 1: sales figures from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, online sales amounted
Speaker 1: to nineteen point six to billion dollars, truly an enormous
Speaker 1: sum of money. Now, according to a survey from National
Speaker 1: Retail Federation as well as a company called prosper Insights
Speaker 1: and Analytics that partnered to make this survey. Fifty eight
Speaker 1: million Americans chose to do their holiday shopping online, only
Speaker 1: 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 TWI so we are
Speaker 1: seeing fewer people going to these stores. It's not quite
Speaker 1: to the point where I would want to try and
Speaker 1: go out on Black Friday. I think there's still way
Speaker 1: too many people out there, but we're getting there now.
Speaker 1: There is a growing concern that by extending these deals
Speaker 1: out from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the whole Cyber
Speaker 1: week thing, and the Black Friday sales that start two
Speaker 1: weeks before Thanksgiving, that these sales are going to lose
Speaker 1: their luster. And again, part of what drives so much
Speaker 1: sales activity are the limitations around the sales dates. If
Speaker 1: you make items available only for a limited time at
Speaker 1: a lower price, it drives up consumer interest and it
Speaker 1: encourages shopping. You just introduced that idea in a customer's
Speaker 1: head that the thing that kind of sort of wanted
Speaker 1: is only going to be at a discounted price for
Speaker 1: a short while, and then you're more likely to move
Speaker 1: them to actually buy that thing. But if you extend
Speaker 1: the sale out, you make it less special. You dilute
Speaker 1: that effect to some extent, and the danger is that
Speaker 1: ultimately you'll start to see sales slow down or worse yet,
Speaker 1: decline as a result, because people don't feel compelled to
Speaker 1: go out and buy that thing because it's been marked down.
Speaker 1: As for what is driving the popularity of online shopping,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is opportunity. More people have access
Speaker 1: to getting online than ever before, and for many people,
Speaker 1: working at a computer is part of their job, so
Speaker 1: they can easily access 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
Speaker 1: shopping to just times when they're on break and they're
Speaker 1: not actually trying to snag a deal on the company dime.
Speaker 1: You would still expect to see growth in this field,
Speaker 1: just because we're seeing more penetration in computer access and
Speaker 1: internet access. The National Retail Federation predicts that in retailers
Speaker 1: will see an increase in sales between four point three
Speaker 1: percent and four point eight percent. That's actually a step
Speaker 1: down from the increase in twenty seventeen that was at
Speaker 1: five point five percent. Over the figures, but it still
Speaker 1: means that we're going to see more sales this year,
Speaker 1: and it would mean that the entire holiday season, not
Speaker 1: just Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but during the course
Speaker 1: of the holiday season, we will see sales between seven
Speaker 1: hundred seventeen point five billion dollars and seven twenty point
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars, getting close to a trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: sales over the holiday season. That is crazy. So now
Speaker 1: let's get down to brass tacks. How do you find
Speaker 1: good deals? Well, like I mentioned earlier, deals are happening
Speaker 1: before and after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so those
Speaker 1: days don't really matter as much in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things. By the time you are listening to this episode,
Speaker 1: on the day that it publishes, deals are already going on.
Speaker 1: Amazon typically leads the charge, and I imagine part of
Speaker 1: this strategy is that they're trying to head off all
Speaker 1: the retailers at the past. They're trying to get ahead
Speaker 1: of them, get ahead of Black Friday, because there's a
Speaker 1: limited amount of money out there. Right, Shoppers are only
Speaker 1: going to spend so much this year, so Amazon wants
Speaker 1: to get ahead of all the other deals to get
Speaker 1: as much of those dollars as it possibly can. That's
Speaker 1: the deal with business, right. Online sales are actually best
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving Day, typically with an average discount of twenty four.
Speaker 1: Categories of stuff that tends to have the biggest discounts
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving Day include things like sporting goods, computers, video games,
Speaker 1: and clothing. So if you're shopping for any of those things,
Speaker 1: set aside some time on Turkey Day to pop online
Speaker 1: and check out some deals. But if you want to
Speaker 1: buy something like a television or a tablet, computer, or
Speaker 1: maybe a small appliance, your best bet for the biggest
Speaker 1: discount online is actually Black Friday. Not Cyber Monday, but
Speaker 1: there's no need for you to jump in a call
Speaker 1: are and head to the local mall. You just go online.
Speaker 1: Online sales tend to be best for those items. On
Speaker 1: the old traditional shopping day, Cyber Monday is still great
Speaker 1: for a lot of different deals, but if you're really
Speaker 1: in the market for something new, or you're looking to
Speaker 1: save the most money on gifts Thanksgiving and Black Friday,
Speaker 1: or when you should pop open the computer and hunt
Speaker 1: around a bit. It's also a great idea to do
Speaker 1: some research on the various items that are for sale.
Speaker 1: You might find that the discounted items are ones that
Speaker 1: are not really the best in their class. They might
Speaker 1: lack some interesting features. This happens a lot with television's.
Speaker 1: You'll see a lot of TVs get marked way down.
Speaker 1: Then 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 can 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 count 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 five dollars, and then going into November it
Speaker 1: gets marked up to six 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 go.
Speaker 1: A m I 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. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoyed that episode about the history of cyber Monday goes
Speaker 1: into not just tech obviously, but economics. But then a
Speaker 1: lot of my topics do spill over into that because,
Speaker 1: as we have understood for a long time, tech does
Speaker 1: not exist in a vacuum unless it's a spacecraft in space,
Speaker 1: and then it then it does exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: I gotta come up with a better a better phrase. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed that episode, and we'll be
Speaker 1: back with a new episode very soon. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to give you, guys something didn't want to skip a Monday,
Speaker 1: and I also didn't want to make super producer Tari
Speaker 1: have to work during a holiday because I mean, she
Speaker 1: deserves her time off, probably more than I do. So
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is on the Twitter. The handle is tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
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