Black Friday: How will you spend?

It's the largest shopping day of the year in the United States, or at least that's what retail stores everywhere are hoping. Can we predict the Black Friday by looking at the past?

It's been an up and down ride the past few years. Online shopping has increasingly been thrown in the mix and a great recession happened on top of that. What is the landscape in the retail market compared to last year? How did the recession impact retail stores? These are some of the questions that this infographic and illustration hopes to answer. What happens this year is up to you.


Trivia
• According to Wikipedia, the name Black Friday may have first come associated with the day after Thanksgiving in Philadelphia as police described the traffic jams and crowded sidewalks of downtown stores.

• Originally, the term was associated with the 1869 financial crisis that occurred on a Friday.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date for Thanksgiving one week earlier to extend the holiday shopping season.

• A related event invented by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org is Cyber Monday, the Monday that immediately follows.

• The actual busiest shopping day by sales volume of the year is the day before Christmas


References
Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday
Analysis: As school starts, retail thoughts turn to holidays
Black Friday a Big Win for Online Retailers [STATS]
Black Friday sales up 0.5 percent: ShopperTrak
Sorting through Black Friday data
2009 Black Friday Results and Cyber Monday Indicators
2010 Retail Industry Chapter 11 - Complete List of Retail Bankruptcy Filings
Black Friday Trivia

This is a guest post by Brian E. Young, a graphic designer and illustrator who blogs and podcasts about creativity at Sketchee.com.