After 16 Years, Does Cyber Monday Even Make Sense Anymore?

When the National Retail Federation unveiled the “Cyber Monday” concept to the world in 2005, it was a well-intentioned retail strategy designed to not only draw attention to the then-nascent world of eCommerce, but to delineate it from its better-known in-store ancestor, Black Friday.

So dominant was brick-and-mortar retail’s grip on the consumer 16 years ago, that it made sense for online merchants to have a day of their own to highlight their unique position and offering without having to share the spotlight and be compared to their larger competitors.

For context, the initial Cyber Monday was an event most commonly accessed via AOL at home, which was the dominant web browser at the time, or maybe even on a Nokia N70 or Blackberry smartphone, given that the iPhone wasn’t born until mid-2007. Or more likely, the office computer, which had much more computing power back in the day. In fact, Cyber Monday got its moniker after retailers noticed online activity peaking that day, not the Friday after Thanksgiving or the weekend in between. Home computers, if people had them, were slow, cumbersome and hard to use — thus the shop until you drop at the office the Monday after.

Suffice to say, the digital world was a vastly different place at the time, as was digital retailing’s place within it.

Fast forward to the present, and the notion of Cyber Monday, while still actively promoted by scores of brands and trending on Twitter and elsewhere, has become a bit of a blur, given that online retailers — or increasingly omnichannel retailers — no longer wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving to roll out fresh deals to entice consumers.

In fact, many stores not only don’t wait for Black Friday anymore, they can barely wait for Halloween to end to start setting up the Santa displays in hopes of spreading out the holiday rush, and turning it into an eight- or 10-week marathon rather than a four- or five-week sprint.

To be sure, spreading out the shopping season is not a bad idea, especially given the current supply chain constraints, delivery bottlenecks and personal budget trauma seasonal shopping inflicts on so many. But Cyber Monday’s current role and place within this elongated period of consumption is far less clear today than it was a decade and a half ago.

Upsizing to Cyber Week

For many retailers, including Walmart, the shortcomings of a one-day digital showcase like Cyber Monday have seen the event informally re-branded into Cyber Week — a seven-day string of promos, discounts, and livestreamed shopping events that not only aims to differentiate from physical retail sales, but to dominate them by appealing to young, new consumers in a whole new way. Cyber Week’s identity is to get consumers excited to shop with a favorite celebrity or influencer, however, whenever and wherever they’re most comfortable.

“We believe the future of retail lies in social commerce,” Walmart U.S. Chief Marketing Officer William White said in a blog post last week which announced the company’s expanded catalog of 30 shoppable events on eight different platforms, starting with a Cyber Week kick-off that began Sunday.

Read more: Walmart Calls Livestreamed Shopping Shows on Twitter ‘Future of Retail’

Another current challenge that is diluting the existing Cyber Monday franchise is the fact that COVID has severely reduced what used to be a spate of “doorbuster” sales starting Thursday afternoon that catered to shoppers who were eager to get out of the house after a big Thanksgiving meal.

While some stores do still open early on the holiday, most major retailers have let the 24-7 flexibility of their websites fill in any urgent consumption needs. What this has done is further water down the one-day wallop, since by the time Cyber Monday rolls around, most consumers and merchants are at least five days into the holidays already.

Adding to the froth is the newer but not inconsequential Small Business Saturday, which was also created by the NRF and is purported to represent the 97% of retailers that are small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) —  which is of course a tally of retail brands, not retail sales. Even so, it’s another one-day sales event sandwiched in between a week of other sales and events that are all adding to the collective bewilderment of bargain hunters and holiday-minded shoppers.

This is not to begrudge Cyber-anything, or to minimize the increasingly large share of sales that are now being done online. Quite the contrary. It is simply addressing the fact that by many measures and for many reasons, Cyber Monday now seems a bit adrift, within a growing sea of seasonal sales and the shifting sands of how we now shop.