Black Friday beats Cyber Monday by a landslide in mentions but not in sales

We already have Christmas just around the corner and, it seems that this year the Christmas preparations have been brought forward thanks to the Black Friday, a trend that was established in Spain just five years ago.

We can say that the kick-off of commercial Christmas begins with the Black Friday and this year's sales figures have been historic.

How many products were sold and how much was billed during Black Friday?

Amazon recorded 1.4 million orders during Black Friday Friday 460,000 (48%) more than in 2016 in Spain alone. On average, it would be 16 products per second, which would mean 6 more products per second than last year. Los best selling items, as expected, were technological products, appliances and video games.

It should also be noted that in the United States there was another record figure, the FBI received up to 203,086 requests for background information in order to buy firearms, which would have surpassed sales from the previous year.

In the United States alone, more than 5 billion dollars were raised in Internet shopping.

In Spain, the best-selling products were the SanDisk memory card, the Garmin Fenix 3 HR multisport watch and the Cecotec Conga Excellence 990 robot vacuum cleaner.

The first Monday after Black Friday is celebrated on Cyber Monday, one more shopping holiday before Christmas. The main difference of Cyber Monday is that The offers are only on the Internet, while on Black Friday they could be found both online and in physical stores.

On Cyber Monday, at 4:30 p.m., people had spent 3.4 billion dollars on online purchases, reaching the total sales figure for 2016. Cyber Monday registered a record high, the highest-selling online day in U.S. history.

Los best-selling items during Cyber Monday in the United States, like Black Friday, were technological technologies such as, for example, the Nintendo Switch, Chromecast, Roku, Hatchimals & Colleggtibles and Amazon Echo.

Black Friday vs Cyber Monday online

In Novicell, rather than statistical data on sales, we are more interested in the data that has been generated online around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which is why we have carried out an ex-post analysis.

To collect the different data, we have made a retroactive monitoring It took a week to find out which of the two days was most talked about both in the United States and in Spain.

As we can see in the following graph, worldwide interest in Black Friday has been increasing over the last 12 years, while that of Cyber Monday does not arouse the same interest. It should be noted that Cyber Monday has been taking place for less years, but it has more and more followers.

As we mentioned before, Black Friday has been celebrated in Spain for more or less 5 years and it seems to be a success. We can see what a day that arouses interest among Spanish users is like.

El Black Friday has generated on the net (social networks, online news, blogs, forums, etc.) 6.2M mentions worldwide, where 51% of comments were generated in the United States, followed by Brazil (13% comments), United Kingdom (6.4% comments) and Spain (4.5% comments). Obviously, the highest number of mentions are concentrated on the same Friday that Black Friday is celebrated.

We can also see how the social network that generated the most mentions was Twitter with 86.4%, followed by Instagram (4.2%), Forums (3.7%), Blogs (2.7%) and Online News (2.6%).

In Spain, 282.3K conversations have been generated about Black Friday Twitter being the social network where the most mentions have been made.

On the other hand, Cyber Monday has also aroused a lot of interest, but nothing compared to the mentions that Black Friday has received.

1.5M are the mentions that have been generated about Cyber Monday worldwide, 4.7M less than Black Friday. Minus Brazil, 3 of the 4 countries that have made the most mentions of Cyber Monday are the same countries that have mentioned Black Friday, the United States with 78.6% of comments, followed by the United Kingdom (2.7% mentions), Canada (2%) and Spain (1.4% mentions).

In Spain there have only been 21,100K mentions about Cyber Monday, 261.2K less than Black Friday. 87.9% of comments were registered on Twitter.

In times of peak consumption, it is normal that not everyone agrees with the days it seems to have to be consumed yes, or yes. These days there are also some anti-consumer protests to combat consumerist fever, such as the “Buy Nothing Day”, and also actions to promote sustainable consumption such as, for example, #greenfriday.

Globally, the “Buy Nothing Day” generated 10.1K comments, a figure much lower than that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Now it's your turn to decide, are you more of Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Buy Nothing Day?

As we can see, Black Friday has gained a lot of strength in a few years in Spain, and we have even adapted it in our own way. After seeing how many companies started their offers on Monday and kept them until Sunday, maybe we are looking at a new trend, Black Week.

One of the causes that Black Friday is more successful than Cyber Monday is due to the advertising that companies invest in highlighting their offers for the first holiday but, above all, because of the messages that users share on the network.

Surely these days you will have had dozens of messages in your email box with dozens of messages about Black Friday offers and discounts, on the other hand, on Cyber Monday you will not have received the same amount.

In short, Black Friday won online and in advertising, but Cyber Monday was the clear winner in terms of sales.

If we were to make a more in-depth analysis, which requires more time and resources, we could know what type of message was most commented on on the network, what were the most outstanding offers, what opinion users had about the promotions that circulated on the network, what was the message that had the most engagement, etc.

For a company, this type of social listening analysis is very important since it would allow them to know at all times what the user thinks about their products, services, customer service, price, etc. And the information collected would be of great value in order to create or adapt the new digital strategy with content of interest to the user.

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