[IP] Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: December 1, 2008 11:18:20 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy@warpspeed.com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales

Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales

Posted By Barry Ritholtz On December 1, 2008 @ 7:11 am

<http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/spinning-black-friday-retail-sales/ 
>

A few things you can count on every year around this time:

	• Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest  
groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;
	• Headline writers will get it wrong
	• Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales;
	• Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong;
Such is the current situation with the Black Friday sales data, with  
reports still trickling in from around the country.

The WSJ goes for a hat trick of errors, starting with this article’s  
headline:

• [1] Holiday Shopping Off to Strong Start

What’s wrong with this? First, as opposed to actual sales data, they  
rely on a “survey of 3,370 shoppers, the National Retail Federation  
estimated shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over the weekend, up  
7.2% over last year’s $347.55.” The National Retail Federation is  
hardly the objective group you want crafting (or hiring 3rd parties to  
create)  survey questions; 2nd, we know that humans are terrible at  
forecasting their own behaviors. Historically, their projections have  
had little correlation with their actual spending patterns. And third,  
the headline is belied by the details contained in the article. ([2]  
MarketWatch was no better)

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