Cyber Monday fails to generate excitement, as Black Friday soars

From local is lekker to hyper-localisation: Township consumer trends to watch this festive season

Mongezi Mtati

Despite efforts by retailers to keep the momentum going past the weekend, Cyber Monday fell flat, says CEO of online marketing agency 25AM, Andre Steenekamp. Black Friday 2016 was clearly the favourite sale event of the year by comparison.

While Black Friday has generated 97.2% of the conversation around these two sale days, Cyber Monday only accounts for a paltry 2.8%.

The conversation around Cyber Monday has actually decreased since 2015, when social media mentions amounted to 9.5% of the buzz around this increasingly popular sales weekend. This is despite the hashtag trending widely in South Africa on Twitter on 28 November 2016 and mailers filling up inboxes for the day.

It would seem that online stores such as iStore, Takealot, Zando, Sportmans Warehouse and NetFlorist tried to own the day (Cyber Monday), but the amount of conversation did not generate the same hype and mad shopping rush as Black Friday. Overall, Black Friday 2016 generated nearly 50,000 conversations on social media (mostly on Twitter), while online shopping systems struggled to keep up with the demand.

2016

By comparison, 2015 peaked at just over 15,000 conversations through online networks, as shown here:

2015

Love it or hate it, Black Friday appears to be here to stay. Stores and online platforms should prepare themselves for the 2017 rush and aim to improve their social media footprint in order to capitalise on the obvious popularity of this unique shopping day.