Next Friday, overly aggressive customers across the nation will camp out in anticipation to battle their competition: thousands of other customers hungry for the famous deals found on Black Friday. However, there is another group of people—a wiser group of people—who will obtain deals often just as lucrative and more importantly, they’ll be fast asleep in their warm, cozy beds that Friday morning.
These people aren’t worried about camping out for the deals on Black Friday because they know Cyber Monday awaits them on the other side of the weekend. Cyber Monday attempts to lure early Christmas shoppers just as Black Friday does, but solely through online retailers.
This unofficial, intangible holiday officially started in 2005 by shop.org, supposedly targeting the large number of people shopping on their computer while at work. Seven years later, the target audience grew larger thanks to the near-infinite Internet access available through smartphones and tablets.
A company tracking Internet activity called comScore looked at how much money was spent on Cyber Monday throughout the later half of the last decade. While a measly $484 million was spent on its first year of notoriety, that number nearly tripled by 2011, which raked in approximately $1.2 billion. The last two Cyber Mondays were the heaviest online spending days of their respective years.
The allure is obvious. Enthusiastic Black Friday shoppers camp out overnight or wake up long before the crack of dawn in order to secure a desirable spot in line. Once you’re there, shivering and sleepless, you’ve got to battle hundreds, even thousands of others waiting in front of whatever given Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. you happen to find yourself at. Remember that Wal-Mart employee trampled to death by a crowd of 2,000 in 2008? Cyber Monday enthusiasts sure do.
While some online deals aren’t quite as outrageously cheap as ones found at 5 a.m. at a Wal- Mart, you have a far less chance of being trampled while sitting at home at your computer desk. Cyber Monday online retailers, which include Apple, Best Buy, Dell and more than 800 other companies offer free shipping along with several other tempting discounts. Shop.com compiles and neatly organizes them on cybermonday.com.
As a final warning, if you’re going to take part in some of Cyber Monday’s online deals at work on Monday, be sneaky. A 2010 survey by CareerBuilder found half of U.S. workers planned to spend time shopping online while on the clock. Employers are cracking down— 22 percent of U.S. employers fired someone for using the Internet for nonwork related activities in 2011 and 54 percent of employers blocked employees from accessing certain websites atwork.
The Daily Aztec endorses you buying your new gizmos and gadgets in our new online era— just don’t get caught.
