Cyber Monday Is Now Pretty Pointless

Image courtesy of Gerard Stolk

Since 2005, Cyber Monday has been the end of Thanksgiving week, as office workers’ brains haven’t quite returned to work, and they use the time to shop online. At least, this is what online retailers must themselves as they schedule sales and other promotions for the additional shopping holiday. Yet is Cyber Monday still a thing, or do we all have shopping holiday fatigue by the time it comes around?

Then there’s the problem specific to the holiday season. Over the last few years, retailers both online and offline have been engaging in Black Friday creep, making their sales start earlier and last longer. Consumers have deal fatigue.

You probably aren’t in a shopping frenzy right now, and few other people are, because shopping online is now commonplace. We carry small computers full of shopping apps in our pockets, and our email accounts are stuffed full of solicitations from our favorite retailers year-round. Mere discounts aren’t enough.

This year, according to the Associated Press, Adobe projects that we’ll spend about as much online today as on Black Friday. Cyber Monday shopping has increased every year since the non-holiday began, but online shopping on Black Friday simply increased more.

How much more? This year, for the first time, online shopping on Black Friday actually took the lead, with almost 10 million more shoppers hitting the virtual mall.

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