Cyber Monday: From Marketing Ploy to Sales History

Michael Finnigan
Thursday, 22nd December 2011
 

Cyber Monday began as a press-release parody of American shopping bonanza Black Friday for e-commerce sites but has since gone on to surprise even its creators and become the largest online shopping event in history.

Early reports from ComScore indicate that this year’s Cyber Monday will likely be the largest year yet, with sales up by as much as 20% and sales estimated at $1.2bn.

Last year Cyber Monday was the first year in history to see online sales exceed $1bn and industry analyst are attributing it to the rise in tablet devices and high-speed internet connections at work.
In 2005 the New York Times reported: “Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and began buying what they liked."

Although now it seems that employers are cracking down on the employee’s internet usage as CareerBuilder’s found in their 2011 survey. They discovered that 54 per cent of employers had blocked employees from accessing certain sites and 22 per cent have fired an employee for holiday shopping, but if this year’s results show anything is that these punishments are clearly not a deterrent for bargain shopping.

Retailers are now planning to extend Cyber Monday and offer extended deals all the way up to Christmas.