Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide. Boxing Day was once a day to donate gifts to those in need, but it has evolved to become a part of Christmas festivities, with many people choosing to shop for deals on Boxing Day. It originated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated in several Commonwealth nations. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 27 or 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is also concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen's Day.
Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at heavily discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving. Some stores' sales continue to Monday or for a week.
In the United States, public holidays are set by federal, state, and local governments and are often observed by closing government offices or giving government employees paid time off. The federal government does not require private businesses to close or offer paid time off, as is the case for most state and local governments, so employers determine which holidays to observe.
QVC is an American free-to-air television network and a flagship shopping channel specializing in televised home shopping, owned by Qurate Retail Group. Founded in 1986 by Joseph Segel in West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States, QVC broadcasts to more than 350 million households in seven countries, including channels in the UK, Germany, Japan, and Italy, along with a joint venture in China with China National Radio called CNR Mall.
The weekdays and weekend are the complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest, respectively. The legal weekdays, or workweek, is the part of the seven-day week devoted to working. In most of the world, the workweek is from Monday to Friday and the weekend is Saturday and Sunday. A weekday or workday is any day of the working week. Other institutions often follow this pattern, such as places of education. The constituted weekend has varying definitions, based on determined calendar days, designated period of time, and/or regional definition of the working week. Sometimes the term "weekend" is expanded to include the time after work hours on the last workday of the week. Weekdays and workdays can be further detailed in terms of working time, the period of time that an individual spends at paid occupational labor.
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for e-commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online. The term was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation and Scott Silverman, and made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year." Cyber Monday takes place the Monday after Thanksgiving; the date falls between November 26 and December 2, depending on the year.
The Christmas season or the festive season; also known as the holiday season or the holidays, is an annual period generally spanning from late November or December to early January. Incorporating Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the various celebrations during this time create a peak season for the retail sector extending to the end of the period. Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies are customary traditions in various locales.
Singles' Day or Double 11 is an unofficial Chinese holiday for people who are not in a relationship. The date, 11 November (11/11), was chosen because the numeral 1 resembles a bare stick, Chinese Internet slang for an unmarried man. The four '1's also refer to the demographic group of single people. Ironically, the holiday has become a popular date on which to celebrate relationships: more than 4,000 couples got married in Beijing on this date in 2011, far greater than the daily average of 700 marriages.
Gilt is an American online shopping launched in 2007. On January 7, 2016, The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million. Prior to the Hudson's Bay acquisition, sales were exceeding growth projections but the firm had not been profitable yet. On June 4, 2018, Boston, Massachusetts-based Rue La La acquired Gilt from Hudson's Bay.
In retail, a doorbuster or door crasher deal is an offer that is handed out early into the business's opening hours; this offer almost always is promoting a good in limited supply. These deals are designed to attract large numbers of shoppers into the business.
Super Saturday or Panic Saturday is the last Saturday before Christmas or Christmas Eve, and is a major day of revenue for American retailers, marking the end of the shopping season which begins on Black Friday. Super Saturday targets last-minute shoppers. Typically the day is ridden with one-day sales in an effort to accrue more revenue than any other day in the Christmas and holiday season. The date is slightly more likely to fall on December 22, 19, or 17, than on December 21 or 20 (57), and slightly less likely to occur on December 23 or 18 (56). On years when Christmas falls on a Sunday, Super Saturday is officially on December 17 instead of December 24 even though the last Saturday before Christmas is December 24.
Flipkart Private Limited is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bangalore, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.
Cyber Black Friday is a marketing term for the online version of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in a 2009 press release entitled "Black Friday Goes Online for Cyber Black Friday". According to TechCrunch, there was $9 billion in online sales on Cyber Black Friday, which is up 21.6% from 2019. With this, the average cart-size for a shopper was $95.60, and Shopify noted that there was an average of $6.3 million spent per minute across their more than one million merchant platform. A lot of this spending was directed towards technological devices, primarily smart phones. Of the $9 billion is sales, $3.6 billion (40%) was for smart phones. However, Cyber Black Friday is still inferior to its sister, Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is primarily known to offer more discounted items, and is projected to reach sales between $11.2 billion and $13 billion in 2020. On a more promising note, Gian Fulgoni of comScore said, "Black Friday, better known as a shopping bonanza in brick-and-mortar retail stores, is increasingly becoming one of the landmark days in the online holiday shopping world." Some Cyber Black Friday sales are short-lived, last through the weekend, into Cyber Monday, and beyond.
Small Business Saturday is a marketing initiative created and promoted by American Express to encourage holiday shopping on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the United States, during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. This Saturday is always the last one in November, so it falls between November 24 and November 30.
Free Shipping Day is a one-day event held annually in mid-December. On the promotional holiday, consumers can shop from both large and small online merchants that offer free shipping with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve.
India has an Internet user base of about 690.0 million as of November 2023, about 40% of the population. Despite being the second-largest user base in world, only behind China, the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the United States, or France, but is growing, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. The industry consensus is that growth is at an inflection point.
The economics of Christmas are significant because Christmas is typically a high-volume selling season for goods suppliers around the world. Sales increase dramatically as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies to celebrate. In the U.S., the "Christmas shopping season" starts as early as October. In Canada, merchants begin advertising campaigns just before Halloween, and step up their marketing following Remembrance Day on 11 November. In the UK and Ireland, the Christmas shopping season starts from mid-November, around the time when high street Christmas lights are turned on. In the United States, it has been calculated that about one fifth of retail sales to one quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas/holiday shopping season. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that expenditure in department stores nationwide rose from $20.8 billion in November 2004 to $31.9 billion in December 2004, an increase of 54 percent. In other sectors, the pre-Christmas increase in spending was even greater, due to a November through December buying surge of 100% in bookstores and 170% in jewelry stores. In the same year employment in American retail stores rose from 1.6 million to 1.8 million in the two months leading up to Christmas. This means that while consumers might spend more during this season, they also are given increased employment opportunities as sales rise to meet the increased demand.
This page is a timeline of e-commerce. Major launches, milestones and other major events are included.
Slickdeals is a mobile app and online platform where community members report and upvote the best deals on the internet each day. It is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Black Friday hoax is an internet hoax about the origin of the term "Black Friday". The term denotes the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, a day that traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. A 2018 viral Facebook post made the false claim that the name derives from a day when slave traders sold slaves at a discount. The term actually originates from a 19th century financial crisis.
