Barry Ritholtz points out the hype and spin in the media coverage of Black Friday. Journalism 101 instructs writers to understand your sources and what their motivation may be. But the media often don't seem to let that get in the way of a good story.
Much of the reporting of Black Friday focused on the data provided by the NRF - the National Retail Federation. Yes, the trade association representing retailers. As Ritholtz points out, the New York Times article suggests that NRF data tallied up sales from Thursday, Friday and Saturday and found shoppers spending, on average, 7% more than last year. But, the data were not from sales results. The NRF data were based upon self-reported spending results from a survey of 3,370 shoppers. Hardly scientific.
As Barry suggests, and as I referenced in my earlier Cyber Monday blog post, a better source to monitor might be ComScore. The ComScore numbers are based on actual eCommerce sales; on Friday, they tallied up $534 million in online non-travel sales, up 1% from the same day last year. The results for the first 28 days of November remained 4% down from a year ago. Those numbers seem a bit more realistic to me, based upon anecdotal discussions I've had with friends, colleagues and a retail analyst I know.
It will be interesting to see where the Cyber Monday numbers come in. I'd guess they will be down a bit from last year. My guess is that as more and more consumers get broadband access in their home, the need to wait until "Cyber Monday" to access fast Internet from work is diminishing.
