While Black Friday has gone global, Cyber Monday remains North American: survey

Black Friday is now a big event for consumers in many leading economies but Cyber Monday has yet to catch on.

An international survey in the week before Black Friday 2017 which asked participants “which shopping event have you been waiting for this year?” found the most popular event was Black Friday.

The online survey, conducted last month among 3,400 participants from eight developed countries, the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia and Japan, revealed that Black Friday enjoys a double-digit popularity percentage in seven of the countries, while Cyber Monday tops out at only 4% outside of North America.

One Hour Translation, the translation agency which conducted the poll, allowed respondents to pick more than one answer to the question which shopping event they had been anticipating. 1,000 of the participants were from the US, 600 from the UK and 300 from each of the other six countries.

In the United States, 14.5% of respondents said they were waiting for Black Friday, which took place on November 24 this year, while 16% were waiting for Cyber Monday (November 27). Black Friday is particularly popular in Canada (about 26%), Spain (about 22%), France (about 21%), the UK and Germany (about 19% each) and to a lesser extent in Australia and Japan (about 10% in each country). On average among the 8 countries sampled in the survey, 17% of respondents were looking forward to Black Friday, compared to about 8% who were looking forward to Cyber Monday and about 3% who were looking forward to the Singles Day event (the Chinese holiday celebrating single people) – making Black Friday a significant shopping event outside the US.

Cyber Monday, on the other hand, enjoyed a double-digit popularity percentage only in the North American countries. 16% of respondents in the United States said they were waiting for Cyber Monday, and 10% of respondents in Canada, figures that were much higher compared to the ones observed in the UK (about 4%), Australia, Germany, Spain, France and Japan (about 3%).

The Chinese “Singles Day” shopping event, which takes place every year on November 11, was highly anticipated among 7.5% of respondents in Japan, as opposed to approximately 6% in Spain and France, 4% in Canada, 3% in Germany, 2% in Britain and Australia, and only 1.4% in the United States.

Despite the fact that the survey was conducted online and was naturally geared towards online consumers, about two thirds of respondents (68%) on average among the eight countries said that they were not looking forward to any online shopping events. About 4% of the 3,400 respondents said they were looking forward to shopping events other than those examined in the survey.

Ofer Shoshan, co-founder and CEO of One Hour Translation, commented: “we would encourage e-commerce companies outside of North America to invest in associating their activity and their brand with the Cyber Monday event.”