The Death of Black Friday: How Cyber Monday is Taking Over

Strong deals and promotions encouraged more consumers to shop over the holiday weekend. Nearly two times as many orders were shipped through Fulfillment by Amazon than by the retailer itself on Cyber Monday, Ennis says.

Black Friday weekend was a boon for all retailers – but Amazon especially. Cartwheel, Target’s digital app, started offering holiday deals including 50 percent off one toy per day on November 1.

Black Friday promotions have little place in the UK.

Well, with its Cyber Monday figures all I could see from the figures was that social was reduced to a measure of “buzz” that saw eBay beat Amazon, apparently. He said “consumers came and bought, impulsively and socially”. “If you’re in the store, they always send them to you”, she said on her way out of Boscov’s, one of the stores where she knows she can often get mobile discounts. This year, though, some businesses didn’t deliver the deals buyers were looking for. Online office supplies retailer Jam Paper & Envelope, for example, used Amazon’s fulfillment services for more of its products this holiday season than a year ago.

When you go shopping in meatspace, you might need maps and directions. Why, already the chains were bringing Christmas items in with the Halloween trucks, which to me seemed a definite effort to skip over Thanksgiving altogether and keep the money out of grocery stores and buy Christmas gifts on Thanksgiving weekend instead. But clothing and accessories stores saw shoppers on average spend $80.55, down from $81.63 a year ago amid heavy discounting.

“We are casting a wide net on any and all types of gifts”, he said.

The day after Thanksgiving traditionally is the busiest shopping day of the year since it marks the onset of the holiday shopping season and the point when most retailers begin to see profits – hence, “black ink” on their balance sheets.

Cyber Monday still packs the biggest punch in terms of a single online shopping day – for now.

The number of online shoppers has grown by almost 20 million from 2015 to 2016.

According to Adobe, Friday set a record for US digital sales at $3.34 billion, which was promptly smashed by Monday at $3.4 billion.

But other days are catching up. In addition, total retail sales for this holiday season are expected to hit approximately $655.8 billion, an increase of 3.6 percent, according to data from the National Retail Federation.

But all of this shopping online creates its own set of challenges, both for consumers and the companies that are trying to get their products onto shoppers’ screens and into their shopping carts.

What made this Black Friday a bit different from year’s past is that a large number of popular stores and malls, including the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the US closed its doors to allow employees to actually get a day off for Thanksgiving, according to press release by CNBC. Jam Paper’s sales on Wal-Mart on Cyber Monday grew 55% year over year, Ennis says.

Amazon had the highest availability of the top 100 trending electronics, carrying more than 95 percent of the sample during the Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday period.

More impulse buying: Mobile shopping entices people to buy right when they’re thinking about it, Gaffney said, “It’s this sense of urgency”.

For the first 28 days of the holiday shopping season, November 1-28, Americans spent just under $40 billion, a 7 percent increase from the same period in 2015.