This year I skipped the madness that is Black Friday for a couple of reasons. I didn’t want to get trampled or shot over Elmo Live or whatever people fight over during the Holidays. It’s a real and very sad state of public safety. The last couple years I took the risk and joined in the retail madness. The cost-benefit really wasn’t worth the effort this year. I hadn’t really thought about Cyber Monday too much since I was out of town, but I was all over “All the Best Cyber Monday Deals” by Monday morning. By Monday night I had spent some $200 on Mimoco’s The Great Depression of 2008 Sale for some very practical but stylish Christmas gifts.
My shopping behavior followed a recent Martiz Poll pretty closely, though my budget’s a bit tighter this year.
It reported that Gen Y (53% of respondents ages 18-29) shoppers are more likely than any other generation to shop Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday AND is the only generation planning to spend the same amount this Holiday season as they did the last. Martiz says this could be attributed to the fact that this particular generation has never really experienced a recession.
Good for retailers, bad for a generation that is very ill-equipped to deal with what could be the worst recession since the Great Depression (the newspapers are printing it!)?? Gen X shoppers (ages 30-42) still plan on spending the most out of all respondents though it’s a decline from last year.
UPDATE: (12/3/08)
Online shopping did alright after all according to ComScore. This year’s Cyber Monday turns out to be the second heaviest online spending day on record. If only the same could be said for brick and mortar stores…
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