Black Friday is the time of year for hunting deals, but also a horrible time of year for trying to get from one place to another. Shoppers are looking to either buy for themselves or stock up for the holidays. Either way, stores experience a lot of hassle trying to empty their stock in preparation for the spring.
In 2005, Ellen Davis, national retail federation senior vice president, and Scott Silverman, co-founder of Shop.org, first coined the national online shopping trend of Cyber Monday.
The idea of buying marked down items from online stores on the Monday after Black Friday was not necessarily new at the time and was widely popular in the early 2000s. However, it was just a few stores that could host the trend in the 2000s.
Our societies habit of online shopping seems normal now, but that is thanks to Cyber Monday. An online shopping industry isn’t something that Cyber Monday created. It was already there as a consistent thought amongst the minds of web developers and marketing teams when the internet boom began. What it did help to do was serve as a field test for the success and popularity of such a market.
In 2018, Cyber Monday is often confused for great deals on electronics only, making it feel a little foreign to see the Kohl’s website plastered with Cyber Monday deals. This is due to the out-of-holiday market being shifted. Some of the most bought items online are smaller items. For example, electronics are bought online because they can be mass produced and shipped whereas clothing is routinely bought in physical store locations.
Larger companies such as Amazon with its Echo Dot and Apple and Samsung with their smartphones and Apple Watches, dominate the ads for Cyber Monday and sales along with it reaching large sales numbers and rake in cash. Smaller companies also create decent sales figures alongside these big companies, and that’s thanks to the internet. Cyber Monday as alone reached a record breaking sales figure of $7.9 billion dollars in revenue in 2018.
These numbers bled into the technology market outside of mainstream iPhones and Macs. Technology companies such as Asus and Microsoft Corp. sell computer parts, whole desktop builds and laptops for low costs. This makes replacing broken bits feasible on a college student’s budget. On the video game side of the spectrum, Steam launched their ever-coveted fall sale at the start of Black Friday and ended it this Monday. Triple A games that usually run for $60 dollars a shot were reduced by up to 70 percent in some instances.
For next year, remember that the days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday are perfect times to give your holiday lists to parents, friends and families so they can shop for you with these deals in mind. If your dorm, apartment or house is lacking something crucial, or even if you just need a new pair of pants, then you can look to Cyber Monday to buy it cheap and get it sent to you quick. But students don’t seem to see it that way.
This year, many MU students that spoke about their experiences with Cyber Monday had nothing to really say on the holiday. They either didn’t buy anything due to a budget concern or forgot Cyber Monday had come altogether. Some of those that did buy made no big deal out of the event, mentioning solely one item they bought and thinking nothing of the day.
Deals are a chance to exercise planning and forethought. It’s not bad to grab a good deal if you happen upon it, but make sure you don’t regret forgoing that TV that would’ve fit perfectly on your desk.
_Edited by Alexandra Sharp | asharp@themaneater.com_
