COH cyber monday

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Same. I cringe a little every time I see the term on the site here.

And I see yet another day has been given a goofy name. Sigh. I don't much care for "Black Friday," either, which sounds like a really bad made-for-TV thriller to me. I never heard that one in use until three years ago, either. Oh, well.

All of it.


- They pre-holiday sales increases long before that Monday. Monday neither shows a peak or a particular surge that makes it any special.

- There are no signs of surges of people seeking online specials for the items they couldn't find on Black Friday or Black Friday weekend.

- Retailers don't usually withold sales for that day (or didn't before the media started to try to turn it into something special to report). The click-and-mortar stores try to offer the same Black Friday sales online that they do in-store ON Black Friday, and the online-only stores are in direct competition with those retailers so they don't intentionally delay sales just to pick up stragglers that couldn't get it. They want to be the primary source of purchase too.

This is particularly true with the growing numbers that report that they "refuse" to go out on Black Friday, due to the sheer madness. They're a market to be tapped-- and tapped on THAT DAY... when they're at home, flooded with sale ads, and thankful they can get the deal without the nightmarish trip out the door...



-Online stores generally don't profit from "surges" of sales like Black Friday gives retail stores. Surges mean more resources are needed to prevent service denials. Those resources cost money, and online, your surge generates none of the "crowdthink" or "herd mentality" that retail stores bank on-- just the frustration of spotty service. Studies show "brick" stores benefit heavily on these days from purchases of hype- people deciding to buy things because they witness other people rushing to buy things. It drives sales revenue much higher than the cost of opening at 4am with heavy discounts. Online, you don't see the other shoppers' activity, so you really don't generate surge mindset in the users on your site. You certainly don't get the spillover of the 'crowdthinkers' Monday morning-- the impulsive 'me too' purchase urge doesn't keep strong over time in most people... 3-4 hours away from the stimulus, it falls to within the margins of error.... making it STILL better to list your online sales on the same day as the brick-n-mortar sales start.

(There IS one benefit for click-and-mortars to not start their BF sales that day-- they NEED that critical mass of hysterical buyers crowding the stores to trigger herd-buying in others. Unfortunately for them, the big online-only retailers will still be undercutting their online sales, so they've found it tougher and tougher to do).

Well, I've got everything they've put out except the Party Pack, which I was looking forward to getting at what I feel is a fair price. Ah well.

well, that does generate one interesting pairing..pity lisar and gg would have to feel left out...

Locking my doors, changing my keys, and getting the attack cats nipped up well in advance of cyber Monday.

Don't even get me started on Cyan Tuesday or Mauve Thursday.

Don't forget Periwinkle Wednesday.

Yes. The only one. In the world.

And we gossip about you.

No - I got it for the same reason too

I bought it primarily to cheeze off the haters, but ended up getting quite a bit of enjoyment out of it while idling at the market.

=D

Do you know what "Black Friday" means?

When your business is doing badly, you're "in the red." When it's doing well, you're "in the black." The red and black refers to the ink they used in ledgers to track sales and earnings. Typically, most retailers earn a huge proportion of their money for the year during the holiday season. Many do upwards of 25% to 30% of their yearly sales the first 3 weeks in December alone. (Some even do as much as 50% then. Imagine that, if you will: if your company makes $10 million a year, you earn $5 million of that in just 21 days.)

In the US, Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. Most people therefore also get the next day off. With nothing much to do, those tens of millions of folks then start their Christmas shopping. Since that officially kicks of the holiday buying season, putting businesses "in the black", they started calling it "Black Friday." (Unless you were born before November 1965, or maybe 1966, they started calling it that well before you were born. It's not a new thing.)

Wrong.

Well, at least that's not what it originally meant. Retailers have tried to redefine the term after failing to get people to stop using it altogether. As Wikipedia references rather well, "The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" in this sense was made by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, in a 1966 publication on the day's significance in Philadelphia:
JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing."

It wasn't until 1980's that people tried to justify it away by referring to the accounting process of "red ink" turning "black" for the year on that day. There's some truth to that-- the Christmas quarter does pose the biggest sales numbers, and while big chains like Walmart and Target may report profits every quarter, some stores are in the red for most of the year... but even then, there's no metric that says that BLACK FRIDAY itself is the point they usually go in the black... many go black earlier in the quarter, many not until very late December.

I love you. Don't ever leave me.

Could a llama and a dragon ever find true love?

on virtue...and now we have come full circle.

I have to wonder if anyone notice the operative word INCLUDE. Which means these are some of the pack being offered for this price. That's how I read it, others may not.

It's also the way most Retailer word deals like this, I should know, I work in retail.

I hope there isn't a limit to the amount of copies of GR, you can purchase through Best Buy cause I want to pick up a copy for a friend's Christmas present also one for myself and my BF. We purchased the virtual copy so we don't have the GR booster pack.

just my two cents...

I talked to a NCSoft representative that told me you can have more than one GR serial on your account if they are different versions. So you can have the digital+collector's pack but not two Collector's Packs. I bought the digital one so I'm picking myself up the $10 pack Monday and one for my nephew hopefully. Sucks that I JUST bought some of the booster packs they mentioned.... At least the wife can get herself some of the ones she's missing....