Originally, Black Friday was a long-time US tradition, widely considered the start of the year-end holiday shopping season. Cyber Monday is a term coined by the US trade group National Retail Federation to describe the prevalence of online shopping on the Monday after Black Friday, a trend it began analysing and promoting a decade ago.
Now Black Friday and Cyber Monday have crossed the pond with the help of US-owned retailers like Asda and Amazon. What's more, both of these shopping 'holidays' are increasingly e-commerce driven, given the ubiquity of mobile devices.
2015 was a record year for UK Black Friday purchases, with shoppers spending an estimated £1.1bn to buy from UK online retailers. John Lewis says Black Friday was its single busiest shopping day ever--with online buying accounting for much of the growth in sales. Amazon UK also had its busiest day ever on Black Friday. Asda, however, wasn't participating in Black Friday bargains due to 'shopper fatigue around flash sales'.
Some UK retail sites had difficulty keeping up with the deluge of orders on Black Friday, as shown by the screen shot at top of this page. How many customers clicked away to buy elsewhere isn't known. But it's clear that both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are shaping consumer behaviour by encouraging shoppers to look for deep discounts on certain days or weeks and focusing attention on price as a key element in the buying decision.
