New times... “Black Friday” vs “Cyber Monday”
I read a pretty interesting article in US Today last week. Black Friday is a tradition in US, but more consumers than ever are turning to websites for their holiday shopping. In an online poll this month in www.shop.com, almost 25% of the respondents said they’d “rather eat their arm off than visit a store on Black Friday”.
And marketers came up, once again, with a solution to satisfy this people’s needs. On Monday, millions headed back for work and logged on to their employer’s high-speed internet connection and start shopping. Nearly 400 retailers had special deals available online at cybermonday.com. Last year, Cyber Monday was the second-biggest online shopping day after Dec. 12. And personally I find it great...why would you wake up at 6 am after Thanksgiving celebration to run to the stores to deal with other hundreds of people while you can shop comfortable at home whenever it is good for you and find better deals? It is really more convenient and even enhances the shopping experience, as “you can get excited when you buy it and then get excited all over again when it arrives at your home”, as a consumer pointed out.
US online sales are growing by 25% annually, while store sales around 6%. More than one-third of all US households already shop online, and that is expected to increase to 40% by 2009. Overall, Internet sales make up just 5% of all retail sales, but it is a giant that’s growing amazingly and, I believe without doubts, it is the future!!!
-Lorena Roque
posted by Brand007 @ 3:29 PM
3 Comments:
I believe that South Korea has the same issue. Couple of years ago, I read an article that approximately 78% of the Korean population have experianced on-line shopping, and among that, about 62% is repreating users of On-line shopping centers. Few years ago, Korean department stores have developed on-line shopping functions to compete against some of the biggest on-line markets such as G-Market, InterPark, Daum, NateMall, and etc.
However, Some people tend to use on-line department stores rather than on-line shopping centers due to authenticity issues.
I find interesting though that stores still wanted to keep black friday going this year. The Wrentham outlets even opened at midnight rather than 6AM and promoted big savings and hired buses to take you from the city to the outlets. Yet other places, such as Cambridge Side Galeria, decided to simply NOT do black friday. People simply don't want to deal with the hassle of Black Friday or any other big shopping days because there are so many people and its tiring. That's why I found the post that someone else made on the AMEX lounge ingenious...
Karin M. Riefkohl
I think this is a great idea but I believe Black Friday will never die. I did not participate in Black Friday this year but last year I woke up at 2am and waited in line to enter Best Buy at 6am. Once I entered the store, it was a mad rush to the products on "super sale." Honestly, for me, I am a very competitive person and part of the fun was waking up early and purchasing goods for half and sometimes two-thirds off the original price. So I guess for the people who absolutely hate waiting in lines and fighting crowds, cyber monday is great because they don't have the in-store pressure of making a purchase decison on the spot knowing that if they don't buy it, someone else will and that there may not be any left if you come back tomorrow. For me, Black Friday is a competition-it is the survival of the fittest
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