Cyber Monday, Shop Until Your Mouse Breaks!

We are now just days away from the official start of the 2010 holiday shopping season with those two notorious leading economic indicators: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Are you ready to start your holiday shopping before you have even cleared the table of Thanksgiving dinner? Shoppers, you may want to wait until after the table is cleared.

When I started this blog, I had never heard of “Cyber Monday”.  Do you know what Cyber Monday is?  Let’s explore together.  Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Black Friday and is quickly becoming the biggest online shopping day of the year.  Cyber Monday is a term established by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. Shop.org did not, however, create the marvel of Cyber Monday; it merely gave a name to the shopping phenomenon that is twin to Black Friday.  Shop.org developed CyberMonday.com where, on Cyber Monday, online shoppers can access products of nearly 400 online retailers who are offering special promotions.  Several other retailers have followed tradition and now offer discounts and savings opportunities for online shoppers on Cyber Monday.

I found that most major online retailers (Walmart, Target, Amazon, Overstock) here in the US advertise and run the same special deals for Cyber Monday as they do on Black Friday.  For example, Target and Amazon advertise and offer the same deals on both days, as well as grouping them together in their holiday marketing campaigns.  Best Buy is advertising Cyber Monday online-only discounts and free shipping for two days, Sunday and Monday. 

Is this just another gimmick to get shoppers to spend more money?  Depends on how you look at it!  Retailers continue to do everything they can to entice consumers to purchase merchandise at the end of the year.  The holiday season is when most retailers go from "red" to "black" - meaning the money earned during this time is profit for the year.  On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retailers typically roll out deep discounts throughout each day until the item sells out.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy anything unless it’s on sale or “deeply discounted”.  Essentially, it is a win-win situation. 

The state of our economy is still affecting spending but there is reason for optimism this holiday season.  Consumers are expected to compensate for the still somewhat struggling economy by shopping for sales more often, using coupons more frequently, and comparison shopping online.  Inuvo’s loyalty shopping portal BargainMatch.com encompasses all these functions in one interface.  BargainMatch is a private-label shopping portal that combines product and coupon search while paying shoppers when they shop on the site.  To start shopping and saving now, visit BargainMatch.com.