Just Thoughts: Times twists facts for Back to School Article

The on-line and print versions of the New York Times had an article implying that the back to school season was disappointing for retailers. It had a number of interviews with shoppers and had at best two facts that it linked to in the article, both of which were misrepresented. The first was a statistic that bases on a Chase survey 73% of shoppers were budgeting the same or less this year for back to school than last year. A link was included and at the end of this article are the relevant results. First of all, only 38% of those interviewed had back to school budgets. Of those 73% planned to spend the same or less. Of course this meant that 59% meant to spend the same or more. Realistically though, common sense tells us that those who budget almost always do it to control spending and many fail to stay within the budget. Second, only 38% bothered to have a budget. Those without budgets tend to spend more impulsively. Generally this statistic has little if any predictive relevance as demonstrated by the strangest twist of fact in the article.

"That pattern was reflected in the August sales results from several retailers, where there were only small sales increases at stores open more than a year despite heavy discounts."

Ok, but when you go to the link provided it shows that overall same store sales were up 3.3% (higher than expected) and the analyst felt that represented a sign that the consumer was back. Now of course, some of the stores didn't do as well as others, so the quote is probably technically accurate, but it certainly misrepresents the information in the linked article.

What probably happened here was that they expected a disappointing back to school season and had this article prepared. When the facts didn't quite support the premise they simply twisted them a little and ran the article anyways.

Chase Slate-U.S. News Consumer Monitor FINAL

NOTE: all results shown are percentages unless otherwise labeled

Below are findings of an Ipsos poll conducted by telephone August 3-9, 2010 on behalf of Chase Card Services & U.S. News and World Report. For the survey, a nationally representative, randomly selected sample of exactly 1,080 adults aged 18 and older across the United States was interviewed by Ipsos. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult population in the U.S. been polled. The margin of error for sub-segments is higher, and base size refers to weighted bases. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error. These data were weighted to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the actual U.S. population according to U.S. Census figures. Respondents had the option to be interviewed in English or Spanish.
An asterisk (*) indicates a percentage value of greater than zero but less than 0.5. Wave 1 data is contained in parenthesis next to this wave's data, and was carried out June 15-21, 2010 according to the same technical specifications as Wave 2.

ASK ALL IN SCHOOL OR WITH CHILDREN IN SCHOOL