Welcome to the first annual Theater of Public Influence Holiday Gift Exchange. In this Episode, Ben, Brady, Holly and the Mikes open up their real hearts and their imaginary wallets and do some secret shopping for their fellow panelists.
Who gave the best gift? Who got the worst gift? What the heck is a Kitten Mitten? Listen and find out. This episode is chock-full of inspiration for your upcoming holiday shopping trips.
As Thanksgiving approaches so does the retail industry’s most important time of year, the holiday shopping season. Black Friday, the official start of the holiday season is just a couple of weeks away and retailers are gearing up for this important shopping event. In a year where the economy has affected so many things expect a significant amount of attention to be placed on Black Friday this year as it will help to predict the outcome of the holiday shopping season. As big as Black Friday has become for the retail industry, Cyber Monday is what industry expects look at in order to predict the season’s online holiday shopping sales.
Posted by Michael, Griffin York & Krause Marketing Strategy
The Monday immediately following retailers largest day, Black Friday, is commonly referred to as Cyber Monday, the unofficial start of the holiday online shopping season. The term Cyber Monday originated in 2005, when 77% of the e-commerce community noticed a significant increase in sales activity on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Over the past couple of years, retailers have been offering special discounts and deals on Cyber Monday to help increase overall sales. Some of this year’s Cyber Monday deals include Banana Republic offering free shipping to consumers who spent over $100 and Express offering a $40 rebate to anyone who spent over $120. A number of retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes and Nobles and Best Buy have actually dubbed this week Cyber Week and are offering unique online sales all week on their respective Web sites.
This year, holiday weekend online sales were once again strong. According to comScore, online sales from Friday through Monday were up 13% when compared to last year. In addition, this year’s Cyber Monday was the second-heaviest online spending day on record with sales of $846 million, that’s up 15% from the previous year. There are multiple factors helping that when combined are the reasons as to why retailers are seeing positive online results.
