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"Cyber Monday" Expected To Draw Virtual Crowds
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Nov 29, 2008 12:01 PM
from the like-black-friday-but-with-fewer-deaths dept.
from the like-black-friday-but-with-fewer-deaths dept.
Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from PCWorld:
"Last year, consumers spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, and it's expected to be even bigger this year. According to a survey by online shopping site Shopzilla for the National Retail Federation's Shop.org, nearly 84 percent of online retailers plan to have a Cyber Monday promotion on December 1. That's up from just 72 percent last year and zero percent in 2005, says Shop.org executive director Scott Silverman."
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Cyber Monday Doesn't Exist 247 comments
xsspd2004 writes "Despite a huge amount of hype, the Monday after Thanksgiving is historically only the 12th-biggest online shopping day of the year. Do a Google search on "Cyber Monday," and you get as many as 779,000 results. Not a bad haul for a term that was created just a week and a half ago."
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Who can afford it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you hate freedom?
Parent
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"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." -Kristoferson
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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In Soviet Russia, economy stimulates YOU!
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean the Soviet Russian economy is based upon nudie bars?
Parent
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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well one would hope that, at least after a few years, that would become true. Problem for some people is, they achieved that goal, and then lost it. That's a bit depressing.
I know two people that lost new cars in the floods here, that didn't have insurance to cover flood damage. So they got another new car, and rolled their old car payments into the new. So they're driving around cars that are worth significantly less than their loan.
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a dumbshit and made double payments on my house and paid it off this year in 11 years total. I should have let my rich uncle "Sam" pay it off for me. I also paid off my credit cards too. All a few months before the economy tanked. BTW.. its called living within your means.
Parent
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Actually, it's largely irrelevant what the actual value of your house is, so long as any of the following are true:
1) You're not selling your house.
2) You're selling your house to move into another house (ie, you're not leaving the housing market)
3) Your house hasn't performed worse than the market at large.
If you buy a house for a million dollars, then then market tanks by 90%, and your house is now worth $100K, then all of the other million dollar houses are also just $100K, now. You will be able to buy a
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I think you missed one obvious item for which the absolute value of the house matters (a lot) -- the mortgage. If you owe more than your house is worth, than you don't have a collateral for the mortgage loan, and you need to either pay up or lose the house.
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just keep paying it, and you'll be fine.
When you're in that situation you have the bank by the balls - the worst they can do is take your house.. then they won't get the value of the loan back (or even decent amount of it, since sale by auction normally goes for far less than market value). Or they can encourage you to keep paying and get the whole value back plus interest.
If you do get into difficulties they'll bend over backwards to help.. payment holidays, reduced payments, etc. because of this - banks are in the business of making money not flushing it down the toilet.
Parent
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:4, Funny)
"I owe more than my house is worth, dear Mr. Government, please make the banks re-value my mortgage."
LOL
Parent
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Funny)
Not really in a spending mood right now.
This is called depression my friend
Parent
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I don't understand the exact problem with this. Most people go out and buy cars with a 10 or 20 percent down, and they're "underwater" as soon as they drive off the lot. As you make your regular payments, the amount you're underwater gets overcome, over time. It may d=sound hard to believe, but everything will eventually recover a few years down the road. I'm an optimist, mostly because I've been living within my means and renting for the last 10 years.
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Well at least it isn't Iowa. Wait.. *I* live in Iowa! Dammit!
Re:Who can afford it? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, even Captain Kirk went to Outer Space to get away from Iowa!
Parent
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Just Hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Cyber Monday is just marketing hype. The peak shopping days come later. The goal is to have a recognizable name that people will google up and read their customers' ads. I suppose they owe a big thank you to Soulskill for getting their message out.
Maybe we can have a slashdot article for Sears' next "White Sale".
Re:Just Hype (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a great example of belief creating reality, however. If people believe that the Monday after Thanksgiving is the biggest online shopping day of the year, then retailers are going to start offering "Cyber Monday Specials." This, in turn, will drive more people to shop that day. Rinse and repeat.
From a marketing point of view, it is actually quite clever.
Parent
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That sort of manipulation is quite common. Just a couple examples:
Thanksgiving was moved up a week so to add another week to the Christmas shopping season, at the request of retailers. I think Thanksgiving also used to be celebrated on Friday. "Black Friday" may well have been one of those manufactured events. As it is, it really isn't the biggest shopping day of the year, I think the Friday and Saturday before Christmas is even bigger.
The tradition of using diamonds for engagement rings and such is pre
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I was partly incorrect. I was wrong about Thursday. But if you look at the wiki link you provided, FDR did move up Thanksgiving one week to give retailers a longer shopping season:
With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas.
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I was partly incorrect. I was wrong about Thursday. But if you look at the wiki link you provided, FDR did move up Thanksgiving one week to give retailers a longer shopping season
The actual effect of moving Thanksgiving from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday in November isn't really that much.
Only two years out of every seven have a November with 5 Thursdays, so 71% of the time there is no difference between "the 4th Thursday" and "the last Thursday".
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Heh. Who said you can't learn something on Slashdot. I'd always thought it was always the 25th november.. didn't know they actually moved it around, like easter.
That said "Cyber Monday" is a completely new one on me... is that when you're all supposed to start cybering with each other?
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And from the consumer perspective, there will be deals to be had. Because deals are expected, deals must be put out there. If one of the web based stores does not bother to put out some e-Monday loss leaders, there is a good chance they will get ignored. The web communities I'm involved with do an amazing amount of sifting the wheat from the chaff - retail or online.
Unlike the folks to camped Best Buy for half a day or more, I can log in and snag the loss leaders the web based stores are pushing. Since
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Yep you said it. Just because a shop is participating in a "Cyber Monday promotion" doesn't mean much. They could throw up a banner that says "Welcome to Cyber Monday - regular prices still apply SUCKERS!" and well, technically they're participating.
In no way does it require or even imply any sort of incentive for shoppers to buy on that particular day.
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The usual trick is something like 'Up to 90% off'. The 'up to' bit meaning some piece of crap that hasn't sold all year is 90% off, everything else is at or near full price.
I, for one, (Score:3, Funny)
expect to get virtually trampled.
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..or at the very least you'll get DDoS'd from the people that can't just click the sale button only once ;-)
Seriously, who makes up this crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Cyber Monday? Is there any proof that people spend more money on this day then any other? Show me the correlation coefficients of money spent online vs day of the year and then we'll talk.
Its just marketing hype, fairly obviously so. They want/desperately need to create new 'big shopping days' now that peoples buying habits are changing.
Re:Seriously, who makes up this crap? (Score:5, Informative)
In the article, a TigerDirect rep claims that at least for them, "Cyber Monday was the biggest day of the year for us last year--bigger than Black Friday,"
I always thought the biggest day for brick and mortar stores, at least, was much closer to Christmas.
Parent
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Can we please kill the word "e-tailer"? Bury it next to the absurdly-overused "meme". And "mashup".
Don't you mean iKill it? or eCancel?
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Imagine you were anxious to go out on Black Friday and buy some toys, electronics, etc. on the cheap. Then you get to the stores too late, and everything you wanted to get cheap is gone. Now what?
Answer: you go online and buy it instead, because it's still cheaper than shopping every chain store in town.
Of course, "Cyber Monday" made more sense in the years when most shoppers had little or no internet access at home. Nowadays the "Cyber Monday" shoppers are just as likely to start their online shopping from
Cyber Monday? (Score:5, Funny)
Cyber Monday?
I put on my robe and wizard hat
Quake Mod? (Score:3, Interesting)
if you had a Quake like interface to capture purchases
and kill your competitors (fellow shoppers).
"Announcing a PS3 special for $199 to a hardy victorious few."
I guess Amazon is closed on weekends? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had no idea I had to wait until Monday to start shopping online. I'm glad this Slashdot story showed up or else I might have just gone on buying stuff today and tomorrow and missed out on my chance to contribute to some meaningless statistics!
Cyber Monday for non-USA (Score:3, Informative)
The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas....
Origin of term
The term "Cyber Monday" is a neologism invented by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation...
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Apparently apple are trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to introduce black friday to the UK. They've got an uphill struggle as it's just a normal working day and most people are busy saving up for christmas at the moment.
So ... (Score:2)
assholes.
and if you know whats good for you (Score:2)
not trolling, just saying it seems like a farse. spending was only up 3% on black friday this year, and thats with some notably deep discounts. retailers are worried spending will slow to a crawl during the holidays, so theyre creating another reason to keep spending much the same way mothers day was invented by card companies. besides, isnt tech day everyday for slashdotters?
Virtual shopping too crowded (Score:3, Funny)
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bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
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My robe and wizard hat.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh.... nice rant.
However, what has it got to do with more people shopping online on Monday?
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