The term was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation and Scott Silverman, and made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year.
Cyber Monday has become the online equivalent to Black Friday and offers a way for smaller retail websites to compete with larger chains.
The shopping event, which originated in 1950 with retail stores lowering prices and extending hours, evolved into a global online phenomenon in 2000, boasting one of the highest worldwide sales, and subsequently inspired the creation of Cyber Monday in 2005.
[5] The term "Cyber Monday" was coined by Ellen Davis,[6][7] and was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season.
In late November 2005, The New York Times reported: "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.
[11] The idea for having such a holiday was created by Tony Valado, in 2003 while working at 1800Flowers.com, and coined "White Wednesday" to be the day before Thanksgiving for online retailers.
[12] Beginning at 7 pm AEDT on November 20 in 2012, Australian online retailers decided to hold a similar event for the first time, dubbed "Click Frenzy".
David Jones, a major retailer, ran a competing sale dubbed 'Christmas Frenzy' on the same date.
According to the article, an estimated 80% of Canadians were expected to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
[16] Speculation has been made that with all major US television broadcasters—which are typically available to Canadians—emphasizing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for stores that are also doing business in Canada, Canadian retailers needed to mimic sales offerings in order to keep Canadian dollars from being spent in the US.
[33] In 2009, comScore reported that online spending increased five percent on Cyber Monday to $887 million and that more than half of dollars spent online at US Web sites originated from work computers (52.7 percent), representing a gain of 2.3 percentage points from last year.
Whether to take advantage of the extensive Cyber Monday deals offered by retailers or to buy gifts away from the prying eyes of family members, this day has become an annual ritual for America's online holiday shoppers.
[35] In 2011, comScore reported that Cyber Week saw US consumers spend over $6 billion online from November 28 to December 2.
[37] In 2013, Cyber Monday sales continued their growth and recorded their highest grossing day ever at $2.29 billion.
[42] In 2018, according to Adobe Analytics, Cyber Monday hit a record $7.9 billion of online spending, which was a 19.3% increase from a year previous.