Cyber Monday

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The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, "Cyber Monday" symbolizes a busy day for online retailers, and one in which online stores offer low prices and promotions.

[edit] Origin of term

The term "Cyber Monday" is a neologism invented by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division, and was never in common use within the ecommerce community before the 2005 holiday season. According to Scott Silverman, the Executive Director of the organization, the term was coined based on research revealing that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. While the term "Cyber Monday" was created in November 2005, the mainstream media picked up the term and reported as if "Cyber Monday" had been a long-running concept, much to the surprise of the Internet community (who were quick to dismiss the claim). "Cyber Monday" is often associated with the unfounded belief that it is the busiest (highest sales volume) shopping day of the year for online retailers, because people would continue shopping while at work from the company's computer. (This is related to a similar unfounded belief for Black Friday, which is often misstated as the biggest "brick and mortar" retail sales day of the year.)

Ecommerce sites report that the busiest shopping days usually fall between December 5-15 in a given year. In 2005, the year the term Cyber Monday was coined, the busiest online shopping day of the year in the U.S. was actually December 12, two weeks after "Cyber Monday".