Online Retail Navigates The Cyber Monday Conundrum

Happy Cyber Monday! I know—it’s next week. But really, is it? These days, pretty much every day in November offers an extravaganza of online savings. As I write this on Friday afternoon, Walmart.com is shaving $549 off a 40-inch 4K HDTV, Amazon.com has a few pages of “Black Friday” deals and BestBuy.com is offering a “rush sale” and the chance to “get a jump on holiday shopping.” These online juggernauts don’t want you to wait until the Friday or Monday after Thanksgiving to start buying. They want you to spend now. In fact, they may be counting on it. Cyber Monday was officially created back in 2005 as a way to get people into the web’s digital stores. The internet companies had noticed something unusual in their sales data: people were returning to work after the holiday and using their office broadband to go on online shopping binges. So retailers anchored their biggest internet promotions on the Monday after Thanksgiving and an organic trend was turned it into a sanctioned frenzy of online spending. Read more at Bloomberg.