Marketeers at Shop.org today are dancing a victory dance.

Shop.org is the applause machine for online retailers. In a clever but deceitful plan they came up with a way to piggyback ride on the "Black Friday" phenomenon that sees sales in retail store spike on the day after Thanksgiving.

The idea: claim that there is such a thing called "Cyber Monday" where workers after a three days of shopping in brick and mortar stores would continue their buying spree online, using their bosses broadband connections. Cyber Monday, in summary, was portrayed to be the largest day of online shopping in the year.

Some media took the bait. And some shoppers were fooled into thinking that there bargains to be had, causing a 35 per cent rise in internet traffic.

But Shop.org's executive director Scott Silverman quickly confessed his deceitful ways to BusinessWeek: "It's not the biggest day. But it was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement."

The Monday after Thanksgiving actually doesn't even come close to being the largest day in online shopping. It ranks at a mediocre 12th place. For your online shopping bonanza, you should've looked at November 22 (which is when Microsoft started selling the Xbox 360 in the US).

Crazy Thanksgiving shoppers are mostly found offline

Tags: shop.org, e-commerce

30 Nov 2005