Cyber Monday or Black Friday?

Considering the growing influence of online sales, is Cyber Monday becoming more important than Black Friday?

That’s actually a very interesting question as I, someone who is exceptionally slow at technology adoption, have even started to shop online for Christmas instead of venturing out into the fight that is the holiday shopping season (that reminds me I have to convert my cassettes to CDs this weekend). However, you may be surprised at what we found out. First, there is a reason why they call it Black Friday as sales from this weekend help put retail businesses out of the red and into the black for the year (i.e. making money instead of losing money) as last year’s U.S. Thanksgiving weekend sales (Thursday through Sunday) were estimated to be US$59.1 billion dollars. About 10 black Fridays here in Canada could essentially wipe out our national debt. As you can see from the chart below, Thanksgiving weekend sales have steadily improved over the past seven years with the exception of 2009 where the reality of the U.S. recession likely finally hit home with the U.S. consumer. But concerns over retail sales over the past couple of years have been put to rest as sales growth has been healthy even if it has been done at the expense of deep discounting. Now then, when we look at a survey for Cyber Monday sales, they too have been growing, but their absolute level of sales remains small in comparison to the Thanksgiving weekend. For example, while we saw almost US$60 billion in sales last year from Thursday to Sunday, the Cyber Monday sales according to comSource, Inc. were $1.465 billion. So, while Cyber Monday is growing in importance as more shoppers turn to the internet and away from the "mall madness”, Black Friday remains the main focus of the markets during the holiday season. Good luck to you all this holiday shopping season!

By The RM Group at Richardson GMP Limited. Our Group can help you.

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Source: Richardson GMP Limited

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