Cyber Monday to persuade people to shop online?

Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, created by companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".^[1] According to the Shop.org/BizRate Research 2005 eHoliday Mood Study, "77 percent of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially last year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is driving serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year (2005)". In 2006, Shop.org announced^[2] that it launched the CyberMonday.com portal, a one-stop shop for Cyber Monday deals. In 2010, comScore^[3]reported that consumers spent $1028M online on Cyber Monday (excluding travel, 2009: $887M), the highest spending day of 2010. Cyber Monday has become an international marketing term used by online retailers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany andNew Zealand.


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Origin of term

The term "Chuter Monday" is a neologism invented by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation.^[4] It was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season. According to Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org, the term was coined based on research showing that 78% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004.^[5] In late November 2005, the New York Times reported that "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."^[6]

United States

In 2006, comScore reported that online spending on Cyber Monday jumped 25% to $608 Million,^[7] 21% to $733 Million in 2007,^[8] and 15% to $846 Million in 2008.^[9]

In 2009, comScore reported that online spending increased 5 percent on Cyber Monday to $887 Million and that more than half of dollars spent online at U.S. Web sites originated from work computers (52.7 percent), representing a gain of 2.3 percentage points from last year.^[10]Buying from home comprised the majority of the remaining share (41.6 percent) while buying from international locations accounted for 5.8 percent. According to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, “comScore data have shown that Cyber Monday online sales have always been driven by considerable buying activity from work locations. That pattern hasn’t changed. After returning from the long Thanksgiving weekend with a lot of holiday shopping still ahead of them, many consumers tend to continue their holiday shopping from work. Whether to take advantage of the extensive Cyber Monday deals offered by retailers or to buy gifts away from the prying eyes of family members, this day has become an annual ritual for America’s online holiday shoppers.”^[10] 

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