What Is Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
on November 15, 2009 at 12:01 am in Articles, Holiday's & Gifts
What is Black Friday?The day after Thanksgiving is referred to as Black Friday. Black Friday is one of the major holiday shopping days & is the official start of the Christmas shopping season.
The origin of Black Friday comes from the shift to profitability during the holiday season. Retailers went from being unprofitable, or “in the red,” to being profitable, or “in the black”, at a time when accounting records were kept by hand and red indicated loss and black profit. (Info from about.com.)
Retailers publish special sale ads on Thanksgiving Day to get customers into their doors the following morning. “Doorbusters” and “Early Bird Specials” help lure customers in with deep discounts on retail items.
Early Bird seems to get earlier every year, with many stores opening at 5 am, and people camping out overnight in parking lots to get these specials.
Black Friday can also be an online shopping experience. Many retailers publish the same ads online offering discounts with free shipping promotions. This gets customers onto a retailer’s online shopping portal.
For more information, and strategies for shopping Black Friday deals, see this thread.
What is Cyber Monday?
Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday. Black Friday is the term applied mostly to brick and mortar stores, whereas Cyber Monday is the day for online deals.
The idea is that people who missed the Friday deals would go back to work on Monday and shop online from there.
Although that concept hasn’t really held up over time, it has become a fairly significant day for marketing holiday deals online.
For a complete listing of ad scans from all of the major stores nationwide, please visit our Black Friday 2011 page!
Printable VersionTags: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Shopping
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