Black Friday and Cyber Monday now bookend the busiest shopping weekend of the year, but when did they start?
Most people have heard the story about where the term Black Friday originated. The tale goes that retailers operate at a loss for most of the year, which they record in the books with red ink. Then, on Black Friday, most retailers make their first profits for the year, which are written into the logs in black ink, hence Black Friday. However, in reality most successful retailers operate at a profit the entire year. While this is a nice story, it can be traced back to a 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer piece aimed at changing Black Friday’s negative connotations.
The term Black Friday has been used in history for various days, including the stock market crash of 1869, but the first time it was associated with the day after Thanksgiving was 1961. The Philadelphia Police Department nicknamed the day Black Friday because of the inevitable over-crowding that occurred in the city. The combination of people going home after Thanksgiving and people going out in the city to shop always seemed to create trouble. It took a while for the term to spread and somewhere along the way it did lose its negative connotation and became synonymous with shopping and great deals, but it is nice to know about the humble beginnings of the biggest shopping day of the year.
Cyber Monday, on the other hand, is less than a decade old. The marketing team at Shop.org was looking for a way to create buzz for online stores similar to the near hysteria Black Friday receives, so they dubbed the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend ‘Cyber Monday’. One of the biggest factors that makes Black Friday so successful is that almost all stores participate. It is a well-organized nationwide sale, and shoppers respond accordingly by getting excited and spending money. So by creating a similar event for online stores, a mass sale that happens in every store on the same day, they were able to manufacture a similar level of excitement to that of Black Friday.
Before it officially became Cyber Monday in 2005, that Monday was already a pretty popular shopping day, raking as the 12th most popular day of the year for online sales. Buyers who were unable to find what they wanted during the Black Friday deals would often turn to the internet in search of that perfect gift. Since its creation and adoption, Cyber Monday has steadily risen and is now the most popular online shopping day. Consumers now anticipate the deals on Cyber Monday just like the sales of Black Friday, and are willing to wait all year to make their big purchases in hopes of getting the lowest possible price. So if you ventured out this past weekend, I hope you found what you were looking for.
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