Retail-market analysts using satellites to study Black Friday shopping activity

[Amerigo Vespucci]

This weekend, as you pull into the shopping mall parking lot for the hottest Black Friday sales, it’s entirely possible that your picture will be snapped by a satellite orbiting high above the Earth.

Its being done by retail-market analysts who want to know how many customers are heading to the stores — and what that means for retail stocks this season.

And they’ve spotted a trend they think means this is going to be a very merry holiday shopping season.

The satellites snap pictures of hundreds of shopping malls, and analysts painstakingly count the cars in the parking lots of each one, looking to pin down the fill rates of each parking lot.

Armed with that number, analysts can compare this week’s shopping activity with the same week in 2009 and in 2008.

The company at the heart of all this satellite spying on shoppers is called Remote Sensing Metrics, a small, Chicago-based consulting firm that analyzes the satellite imagery and teases out market-moving data from the pictures it sees.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40360100

[earthside]

1. "Buy Nothing Day"

This kind of 'Big Brother' activity -- spying on us by satellite to see if we are shopping -- is just plain creepy.

So, join in "Buy Nothing Day" ... there is plenty of time to purchase all the Chinese-made products you might want between now and New Year's Day.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. I am definitely participating in "Buy Nothing Day"...I am not leaving the house today.

I've even punted grocery shopping to tomorrow. No Black Friday crap for me.

:toast:

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. Unfortunately, I *have* to go to the hardware store today for some 10-24 screws.

I guess I'm a semi-orthodox "buy nothing day" devotee.

[Tesha]

9. Man, if you needed 10-32, we could have helped you! Some nice stainless-steel ones!

But for 10-24, you'd have been out of luck. ;)

Tesha

[Ozymanithrax]

3. I am not going anywhere near a shopping mall between now and Xmas.

Don't celebrate it, and I don't want to suffer being in the middle of it.

I do hope it is a good season, because that will be more proof of how Obama saved the economy and Consumerism.

[Harry Monroe]

5. But if you don't shop, the terrorists win!!

[Ozymanithrax]

6. Well, if that is how they define victory...

then let's declare peace and bring all the troops home.

[hobbit709]

4. Years past I noticed that a lot of people actually had little in their carts.

[lunatica]

7. Looking at shoppers on Black Friday won't tell them anything about the

rest of the shopping days. Black Friday is always about the cattle stampeding which only happens on that day every year. High end retailers will make a killing this year, but others, not so much.

[City Lights]

10. I've been in the house all day.

No shopping for me. I hate crowds.