Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a big deal, and theyre getting bigger every year: according to Barclaycard, which processes around half of all UK card payments, spending on Black Friday 2017 was 8% higher than on Black Friday 2016.John Lewis experienced its busiest hour of online trading ever, while Argos claimed that over two million people visited its Black Friday website in just 4 hours.If you dont take a look, youre probably missing out: in the UK, 91% of UK retailers took part in Black Friday 2017, while the figure was 81% in the US.
Thats a lot of retailers, and those retailers offered a lot of deals.So how can you find the best Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday deals in 2018When is Black Friday 2018Black Friday started in the US, and is the Friday immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday, so this year its November 23 2018.When is Cyber Monday 2018Its the Monday immediately after Black Friday, so Cyber Monday 2018 will fall on Monday November 26.Whats the difference between Black Friday and Cyber MondayThese days there isnt really one what are advertised as Black Friday deals often start to appear well before Black Friday, and are available beyond Cyber Monday.Cyber Monday was originally unconnected to Black Friday the term was coined to mark the date when everybody went Yikes! Its nearly Christmas and I havent bought any presents! and ordered tons of things online when they were supposed to be working.There used to be a clearer division between the two dates, with Black Friday focusing largely on consumer electronics and Cyber Monday on things such as clothes and jewellery, but thats largely gone now.Instead, theyve merged into what might more accurately be described as Black Friday And Cyber Monday And The Week Before And After And A Bit More If Youre Amazon.
But thats too long to type, and BFACMATWBAAAABMIYA is a terrible acronym so lets stick with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.Why Black Friday and Cyber Monday matterFor consumers, the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales frenzy means a whole week or more of what appear to be good deals and if youre savvy, and take advantage of TheIndianSubcontinent's Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals monitoring, you really can save a lot of money.Black Friday and Cyber Monday have changed the way we shop in the run-up to Christmas, and theyve had a massive effect on the retail industry,especially online.As James Miller, senior retail consultant at Experian Marketing Services, told the BBC: there is little doubt Black Friday has dramatically changed the way people shop in the run-up to Christmas, and has created an expectation of deep discounts that arguably did not exist before.Thats good news for us and potentially bad news for retailers, because Black Friday and Cyber Monday dont magically give us more money to spend.
They just change when we spend our money, so perhaps rather than waiting until the week before Christmas to buy our presents we do it on Black Friday and Cyber Monday instead.Once weve spent that money its spent, and if weve spent it on Amazon one of the biggest proponents of Black Friday and Cyber Monday on either side of the Atlantic then that money is lost to more local retailers.Black Friday and Cyber Monday are overwhelmingly online phenomena.
Many retailers offer Black Friday deals in their physical stores (Cyber Monday, as the name suggests, has always been an online thing), but with a few headline-grabbing exceptions of the fistfight-in-a-supermarket kind it doesnt significantly increase footfall.In fact, theres some evidence that it has the opposite effect, with tumbleweed blowing down high streets as we all shop from our homes, schools or workplaces instead.