Is It Better To Shop On Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

How We Shop Has Changed

Black Friday gained much fame for incredible "doorbuster" deals that drew flocks of people to wait all night in line as part of the lucky few who would get these items before they ran out. As we all know, the American economy has become increasingly digital, and the retail industry is certainly no exception. In addition to shoppers going online to grab Black Friday coupons, retailers have recently gained traction with Cyber Monday deals. 

We analyzed the 2014 data hour-by-hour and second-by-second.

The big question here is which day is actually more popular? We sought to answer this question by exploring the online traffic data from 2014. You can find our methodology, sources, and fair use of all images at the bottom of this page.

Methodology

We used two main sources to calculate the average sales and visitors per hour. We started with Adobe's Digital Index which calculated the online sales over 24 hours for each day and measured these values for the start of each hour. Then, using IBM's Digital Analysis Benchmark Report, we divided these hourly sales figures with the average order value to determine the number of orders. Dividing the number of orders by the conversion rate allowed us to determine how many people were shopping online. Note: This is not pageviews, but actual shopping sessions per visitor. Please consult each source for further details on the metrics used in our calculations. 

The calculations for Walmart, Best Buy, and Target were forced to use an assumption about maximum occupancy since the fire code changes per state and each store will have slightly different limits. We used a value of 60 square feet per person for each store.

Sources

• Average sales per hour - Adobe Digital Index
• Average order value and conversion rate - IBM Digital Analysis Benchmark
• Retail store visitors - Experian
• Population data - U.S. Census Bureau
• City population data - U.S. Census Bureau
• GDP data - World Bank
• Average U.S. salary - Bureau of Labor Statistics
• U.S. poverty data - National Center for Policy Analysis
• Average global salary - BBC
• Bill Gates and Warren Buffett salaries - Business Insider
• Airport data - Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• Taxi data - NYC.gov
• Subway data - Metropolitan Transportation Authority 
• Square feet per person - International Code Council, OSHA 
• Google search data - comScore
• MLK Jr. Speech - History Channel
• Woodstock - History Channel
• Super Bowl XLVIII - Fox News
• Mall of America
• New car price - USA Today
• Median home price - Huffington Post
• Coffee data - E-imports
• 2014 Cyber Monday data - IBM
• 2014 Black Friday data - IBM
• 2014 Retail Data - Adobe Digital

Fair Use

Feel free to use any of the images found in this project. When doing so, please attribute the creators (Dealhack) by linking to this project so your audience may learn about the methodology and access all assets that are available.