The year is 2004, both Ellen Davis and Scott Silverman, who work for Shop.org, are conducting research when they happened to stumble upon key information that would, in turn, create a new annual online shopping tradition.
Research showed them that the Monday after Thanksgiving was one of the biggest shopping days of the year. With that finding, the two created a marketing campaign that would encourage people to buy more things for the holidays. A year later in 2005, the first “Cyber Monday” was announced.
The first Cyber Monday saw shoppers spending $484 million. Just five years into the shopping holiday in 2010, it reached $1 billion. Ever since, the line between Cyber Monday and Black Friday has become increasingly blurred. More and more companies have started to put their exclusive deals online rather than in the shops.
In 2018, people spent a record $7.9 billion on Cyber Monday, according to CNBC. This was more than was spent on Black Friday online shopping in 2018 where people spent over $6.2 billion.
It is common for Americans to buy holiday presents between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year, Amazon sold over 180 million items from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday, CBS News reported.
On December 2, the National Retail Federation expects almost 69 million people to browse the internet in search of Christmas deals.
Going forward, Cyber Monday will only grow in popularity as it the most popular way for millennials to do shopping. A 2017 Offers.com survey showed that 88 percent of this age group shopped on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Furthermore, this survey showed 95 percent of Millenials used their phones for holiday shopping.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Battleground State News. If you have any tips, email Zachery at [email protected].
