I wouldn't say that they are 'hypnotized' in the strict sense of the word. I think it has a lot to do with human nature: if you're on the fence about a certain thing and you see that a large group of people really, really want it, you'll find yourself wanting the same thing as well since it's so in demand.
Retailers know this, and I believe they're doing what they can to take advantage of this fact.
Looks like an epidemia to me- millions of hypnotised people push the buttons 'Buy" to get something just because other millions are doing the same at that very moment. Scary.
Things are changing, @Sarahp. I think more and more people are tired of the madness of Black Friday. If the deals being offered online are comparable, why would anyone want to battle the crowds when they could have it delivered to their door stress free?
I'm on my last day of vacation but it will be interesting to look at the analytics from the results of cyber-Monday where I work (it's part of my job). We're Canadian, but it will be helpful to see how far along we are with U.S. trends.
One of the Hottest Items this Holiday Season are Tablets and one site worth visiting is TabletSprint -- they have Android tablets that offer better features than Nexus 7 & Kindle, for a much better price -- one model available is the Novo 7 Flame and it comes with 32GB for $189 (compare to Nexus 7 32GB at $249) -- and has 3 quality features Nexus doesn't - a MicroSD Memory Card slot for unlimited storage, 2 high quality cameras with a 5 megapixel back camera with autofocus & Flash; and HDMI output to a large screen TV, which is nice for movie downloads to watch in Full 1080p (HD) - It's also a great gaming device with a hi-res 1280x800 IPS screen and a 2nd generation dual core cpu. -- TabletSprint also includes $25 in software Apps, plus has something Nexus and Kindle don't - they provide customers with a 4G adapter for free, that comes with a free monthly 3G/4g data plan with free 500MB Data every month, with full internet access, and VoIP voice calling - TabletSprint is certainly worth checking out for this and other multimedia devices.
I'm with KMT568 - the growth in mobile use in general and specifically for ecommerce is a major theme not just for the holidays but for the year! It is cutting across age demographics and will be a much bigger issue in 2013. Mobile friendly will be a necessity!
Cyber Monday has been growing ever since it was developed by online retailers a couple of years back, so no surprise there. What I am surprised by is how many were willing to shop on Thanksgiving, even if it was only online. I would assume that most would want time off and away from a computer when they pretty much spend their whole lives on one. Plus it is a holiday and it isn't like they will be shipping it out the same day. Granted, the online end was better than in-store, but I still think we should leave the big shopping days for the weekend after it.
> sifting through and analyzing all this cyber shopping data presents > both challenge and opportunity, and those retail clients who synthesize, > then optimize, their online shopping experiences based on these changing > behaviors will be the ultimate holiday shopping season victors.
Every shopping season teaches us something new and different. The level of monitoring and industry data US retail industries enjoy is not available in many parts of the world.
> The iPad also continued to dominate tablet traffic, reaching a holiday > high of 90.5 percent. Amazon Kindle leapt into second at 2.6 percent > followed by the Samsung Galaxy at 2 percent and the Barnes and Noble > Nook at 0.6 percent.
I am surprised to see the high number of iPad and low numbers of Amazon. I wasn under the impression that Amazon was doing better in shopping after its latest series.
I think it is interesting to see the trend in mobile device shopping and purchases. This goes to show that the smartphone has truly become a safe haven for users for all sorts of activity.
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
