Amazon is doing its best to jack up sales by inventing a new shopping holiday, but one thing it hasn’t invented is a new idea.

The e-commerce giant is trying to get people pumped up about Prime Day this Wednesday, but its only the latest example of a company manufacturing a “holiday” for the sole purpose of selling stuff.

Online retailers jumped on this about 10 years ago by capitalizing on “cyber Monday.” Timed as the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving, it attempts to extend brick-and-mortar “black Friday” shopping fever to online stores and has proved to be very successful. Most estimates put 2014 “cyber Monday” sales in the range of US$2 billion.

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