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Cyber Monday sets new click frenzy record

Carolyn Cummins

It was a frenzy of online shopping activity last weekend as Australian shoppers embraced the US tradition known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In the US more than $8 billion went into retailers' coffers as shoppers worldwide sought out bargains. But increasingly, the sales were made online, leaving the bricks-and-mortar stores much emptier than any time in the past.

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Cyber Monday and Black Friday merge

US discount chain Walmart are offering Cyber Monday deals on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving.

According to analysts Cyber Monday is poised to retain its status as the biggest online spending day of the year despite a surge of shoppers hitting computers and smartphones instead of stores on Black Friday to chase deals earlier in the season.

Online spending on Monday was expected to increase 10 per cent to a record $US3.39 billion, according to Adobe Systems Inc. Black Friday is catching up, with $US3.34 billion spent online, a gain of 21.6 per cent from a year ago.

The narrowing gap highlights the difficulties for bricks-and-mortar stores as shoppers scout deals from home.

The term Black Friday is applied to the day after Thanksgiving in the US, in a shopping context and is said to have originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. 

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This usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black.

In Australia, more women, or about 60 per cent, went online during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales weekend and of that most (59 per cent) were 34 and younger, according to the global discount code platform, CupoNation​.

Through its data collected on the three days, the platform found that Black Friday keeps growing in Australia.

No exact sales numbers are yet available, but retailers say it was similar to last year. The NAB online retail sales index showed sales grew 0.7 per cent in November, 2015.

Data shows that Click Frenzy rose about 15 per cent, while for Black Friday nearly doubled.

Daniel Bracken, Myer Chief Merchandise and Customer Officer, and Deputy CEO said last weekend that its customers closely followed global retail trends and so the store offered a Myer Super Cyber Sale on Friday and Saturday.

"Customers enjoyed great offers online and in our stores, with small electrical appliances and cosmetics among the most popular purchases," he said.

A spokesman for CupoNation, which is based in Munich, Germany, and is one of the largest deals and discount platforms in Australia, said Australians searched, on Black Friday, mainly for electronics and phones, fashion and accessories and also travel and holiday deals and discounts.

"We have a pretty good overview of more than 2000 current online discount codes and deals from 200 online retailers  and shops, so looking at our database of deals and discounts of Black Friday 2016, we see that the average discount value was 31.6 per cent, being 3 per cent above daily average," the spokesman said.

"The level of the average discount code value remained on the daily level of 22 per cent, but we monitored some deals of up to 95 per cent discount on Black Friday."

The frenzy didn't end there, with the relatively new concept of Cyber Monday keeping people online all weekend.

Major retailers, including David Jones, Myer and some of Premier Investment's stable such as Portmans, all offered up to 30 per cent discounts under the Cyber Monday moniker.

According to CupoNation, quantity wise with regards to web searches, Cyber Monday was less than Black Friday, probably due to the fact it was a workday in Australia.

"The average discount value for electronics on Cyber Monday was close to equal to Black Friday and stayed about 26 per cent, also on Saturday and Sunday," the spokesman said. 

"According to our data set, the amount of discount codes on electronics or fashion was on Black Friday or about 60 per cent higher than on Cyber Monday or any other day of the weekend.

"This also reflects in the number of transactions for fashion, which is very high on Black Friday, but rather normal on Cyber Monday. Most online offers were on fashion, then electronics. 

"In the end, the highest quantity of deals was on Friday, but the quality of a deal always depends on the taste of the online shopper."

with Bloomberg

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