By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
``Black Friday,'' the Friday after Thanksgiving and also America's busiest shopping day, lures millions of bargain shoppers to line up in storefronts before the crack of dawn for the best deals of the year. But the time-honored tradition is recently seeing a shift in date and venue.
Instead of crawling out of bed at 5 a.m. to catch holiday bargains, more and more shoppers are waiting until the following Monday to enjoy the same bargains from the comfort of their home or office.
According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), almost 60 million people were part of the Black Friday rush last year. And while store shoppers have dropped off by about one million since 2005, ``Cyber Monday'' welcomed two million more last year.
Cyber Monday is not only the new term that defines the busy Monday after Thanksgiving, but also the name of a Web site managed by the NRF that list major retailers' sale items.
As lazy consumers are driving up the online shopping trend, marketers and retailers have been quick to react, but they're not focusing on putting out any extra deals than shoppers can expect in the brick-and-mortar stores.
``A majority of retailers are not conducting any special promotions as they see the convenience of online buying as a sufficient incentive to purchase through this medium,'' said Doug Hart, a partner at consulting agency BDO Seidman.
Instead, many online sellers are focusing more on convenience and speedy delivery to maximize consumers' shopping experience.
While retailers are bracing for a purchase boom in the U.S., local marketers regret the same doesn't happen here.
``The biggest online shopping season for us are the days leading up to Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving),'' said a GS Retail spokeswoman. However, she added that Christmas shopping seems to be on the rise compared to previous years as the younger generation tends to celebrate the holiday more.
Although irrelevant to a specific holiday, domestic online shopping sites have done their share to attract more bargain-seeking consumers year round.
Brief spurts of knockoff sales have been popular among the leading Web retailers, as GS e-Shop, DNShop, CJ Mall, among others, have promoted special deals for certain hours during the day or past midnight.
Industry experts say it's the discount that appeals to consumers, but sometimes, it's the unique event that brings a more exciting shopping experience for them.