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Money: Holiday Buysexuals

Posted November 26, 2007 9:42 AM

Here it is, all of the livestock *cough ahem!* people that were all frisky and so excited to flock to the shops and stores now get to sit on the computer and do it all over again. Today is Cyber Monday, a day designated to every person that wasn't smart enough to shop the sales online this last Friday. It's not like they need to be told what to buy (why does advertising really work?) or what to do, cattle simply don't have the capacity to understand anything beyond grazing and purging. But really it's not so bad that people are shopping online, rather that some were doing it in stores on Friday. They had to work hard for it to earn an ominous label like Black Friday.

But today is Cyber Monday so let's take a look at that. A quick low-down from Doug Hart, an analyst at BDO Seidman, an accounting and consulting firm, said Cyber Monday sales would account for about 12 percent of the expected $39 billion in online revenue this holiday season, similar to the 15 percent share of holiday sales recorded by the offline retailers on Friday. It sounds like almost the entire Friday crowd is going to be turning out for the event. This made it kind of surprising to read in the New York Times blog by Bob Tedeschi that some retailers weren't participating in the online holiday sale. A fair-trade clothing retailer's opinion was that “There’s something inherently dishonest about it, if you’re giving a promotion now, you’re kind of saying you stuck it to people who bought from you when there wasn’t a promotion.” Well buddy, you kind of are having wholesale prices at 100+% mark-up. Anyways he at least acknowledged that the policy could mean his site would lose sales to retailers that offer the discounts, but went on to say that “If you go down that path, you’re training your customers to expect promotions." Now where the heck is anything wrong with that? Increased traffic from discounts means more sales which means more money, regardless of the profit made on each sale. It seems like the domesticated consumer gene pool isn't alone in its mindless grazing, but there are sure a hell of a lot more of them: