Black Friday sales are going up nearly 15%

Question

Steep discounts drove shoppers to splurge on Black Friday: Consumers scooped up bargains across several categories, helping online sales jump 14.6% YoY the day after Thanksgiving.

Answer 1

The article hyperlinks the wrong Mastercard SpendingPulse press release and includes one from last year. I found the correct report from this year, linked here, which does support the author’s claim that ecommerce sales rose nearly 15% (+14.6%.) There are many other outlets that have reported this same statistic, all citing Mastercard SpendingPulse as their source. However, the original Mastercard press release does not provide any way of proving their statistics to be accurate. The Mastercard press release states that this is a “preliminary insight” and “is not adjusted for inflation.” Still, in an interview with CNBC Jessica Moulton, senior partner at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm ranked #25 on Forbes list of America’s top private companies, repeated the 15% statistic. The New York Times also cites the Mastercard press release and the 15% number. Therefore, I would say that this article is not misinformation because this statistic has been widely reported by credible sources.

Comments

good job finding the correct source and not giving up on the claim. It would be easy to just then mark this as misleading, but you did the work and followed through.

Answer 2

This statement is too vague to be reliable as Black Friday sales are not standardized across all stores. This fact check uses the source of Marketer which is also a .com source. This source has no true reliability in providing statistics for Black Friday sales. When searching for statistical information especially about big businesses looking at the sales reports or directly at the businesses yearly reports will allow for a better understanding and reliable grasp on how they are doing. Black Friday sales if anything are decreasing as inflation increases within the economy. Therefore this claim is misleading and incorrect.

Comments

I appreciate you acknowledging that this source is a .com source, and thus less reliable. However, your answer could use some more evidence to make it stronger. You mentioned "searching for statistical information." Could you include some of this information in your response in order to back up your ideas?