With the rise of various types of shopping, we also saw a rise in many more opportunities to get discounts on them. The two biggest ones are Black Friday and Cyber Monday at the moment, and they both cover different categories of shops. First, however, let’s see how they differ and which is better to shop at or at least when it’s best to shop at either.
Black Friday
Black Friday is one of the busiest days for just about any store. The masses of customers will flood in early in the morning and depart late at night, usually emptying most stores. It’s easy to spot this popularity. If you’ve ever walked past a store on Black Friday, you’d see entire malls fill up.
This popularity isn’t unwarranted. During this single day, shops will put a lot of their catalog on a considerable scale. These sales allow us to get a thing we always wanted for far less money. These price drops save hundreds of dollars for customers, making Black Friday very special and worthwhile.
Black Friday has spread to other countries outside of the US and has established itself as a shopping day for all of those that wish to get some holiday shopping done. Furthering the overall availability of these huge discounts.
Cyber Monday
While Black Friday encompasses a lot of the brick-and-mortar stores and has its own special areas it excels at, Cyber Monday prefers to do things online. Cyber Monday was started as a way to reinforce smaller retailers and enable those without capabilities to hold multiple brick-and-mortar shops to spread their overall presence on the market.
Considering it has become the second most popular shopping day, it seems the goal has been achieved. The growth of online shops has also greatly expanded the popularity of Cyber Monday, making it an even more prominent and fruitful date. The best part about it is that most of our shopping can be done from home. No masses to push through or any risk of injury. Just the best deals possible, accessible straight from our computer. Places like EBest are also quickly available as a way to get a wider reach of simple items right away.
Cyber Monday is known for having really good deals on tech, which makes it a great time to update one’s technology. The holiday has been increasingly profitable and has spread to other countries, including Argentina, Romania, Chile, Canada, Belgium, and many more.
Is it better to do Black Friday or Cyber Monday?
So, which one is better? Well, it depends on what we want. As noted above, Black Friday is a widespread event that generates a lot of traffic and activity inside of a shop. A lot of people will find this quite a hassle to interact with, preferring to avoid these massive groups. Depending on our distance from the desired mall, we could also find ourselves lacking in terms of patience and time. The gas money we’d have to spend is also a worry, especially with the rise in gas prices.
The available items in our nearby mall will also decide how effective a Black Friday will be, there are sometimes situations where the place we usually shop at simply doesn’t have what we need. It makes the whole trip a bit meaningless so it’s good to plan ahead on what you want to buy. These are already things some people do, preparing potential shopping lists before the actual day. So, availability is a big concern, but there’s one more.
Safety, while Black Friday is a huge event that happens every year, there are still cases of people being injured or killed during it. It may not be as frequent to warrant full vigilance but considering tramplings and pushing have resulted in some serious injuries, it is still worth considering.
Of course, the advantage is that you get an immediate access to your items with all the possible security of owning the item included. The sales can also get quite considerable for out-of-season items, so it’s worth looking around when Black Friday rolls around.
Big ticket items are also extremely worthwhile purchases during Black Friday. It’s possible to save so much more money due to the slash in prices affecting these items more.
Cyber Monday rectifies a few of the issues with Black Friday, especially ones of safety and convenience. Because we shop from our homes, we will not be affected by the traffic, parking or any other struggles that come from driving out to a store. Even lower are our chances of injury, because we needn’t engage with the masses at the mall.
There are even more options to buy from as the online stores are quite low maintenance for jobs. This does result in quite a few unique advantages that will provide us with quick access to the bits and pieces we are interested in.
However, there is the downside of having to wait for delivery when engaging in online shopping. This can be quite a hassle if the specific stores we pick from are further away or find themselves in bad weather conditions. It could delay our delivery and postpone any plans we had with it. There are premium delivery options usually, but they do cost more, so it’s not that good of a solution.
The best things to buy during a Cyber Monday are tech products, as these end up with the best deals. Smaller items are also worth purchasing on Cyber Monday, more so than on Black Friday. It creates a situation where we can ration our shopping list to both of these days based on the nature of items we aim to purchase. There is always a bit of overlap, but if you are attending just one, there’s a pretty easy way to pick between.
Verdict
Because both of these days provide ample sales to the shopping public, it can be difficult to pick which one to engage with and where to save money. It’s also an issue of availability as holiday shopping is actually not allowed at most jobs, so if you try to buy something either online or in person during your shift, there could be heavy penalties.
As it stands, any items of higher value should be purchased on Black Friday. Cyber Monday remains a holiday for everything else, especially technology and gadgets, which can often be found at a considerable discount rivaling Black Friday’s.