Whether or not it has now become reality, I distinctly remember reading a few months after the term was coined and/or popularized that the concept was invented

Whether or not it has now become reality, I distinctly remember reading a few months after the term was coined and/or popularized that the concept was invented as a marketing gimmick. I'm not able to find a source for that original press, but Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Monday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Monday) and Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/holidays/thanksgiving/cybermonday.asp http://www.snopes.com/holidays/thanksgiving/cybermonday.asp) seem to validate my recollection. According to Wikipedia: "In late 2005, after the holidays, ecommerce sites reported that the busiest shopping days usually were between December 5-15 in a given year. For 2005, the year the term Cyber Monday was coined, the busiest online shopping day of the year in the U.S. was actually December 12, two weeks after "Cyber Monday"." According to the 2007 article from Snopes, in 2006 the largest online shopping day was December 13th and in general cyber Monday is the 12th busiest online shopping day. Of course, "Black Friday" isn't really the biggest day for brick-and-mortar retail either. I think that honor usually goes to the Saturday before Christmas.