In the US, ‘Black Friday’ is the Friday following Thanksgiving which marks the beginning of the Christmas Shopping Season and is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year with many stores opening from 4am!
In the weeks approaching 2010 Black Friday, and as evidenced by satellite images of parking lots (taken by Remote Sensing Metrics), it appeared as though more Americans have been out shopping than in the previous two years.
Their data, which uses satellite images of parking lots to determine occupancy, shows that 35% of shopping mall parking spaces were filled this year compared to the 31-32% of the previous two years. And on Saturday November 20, the last weekend before Black Friday, parking lots were 42.3% filled, compared with 36.5% in 2009 and 30.6% in 2008.