Black Friday Challenge
Empower The Village
4/08/2021
Our Mission
Empower The Village (ETV) is a data-driven 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established in 2018 that develops, guides and implements breakthrough, scalable strategies that empower Black people, businesses and community organizations to realize their full potential.
Black America represents approximately 14% of the US population (~1 out of 7 Americans). Despite progress in many areas that ebbs and flows from one generation to the next, Black Americans continue to face serious challenges and setbacks to their Health, Wealth, Peace and Power:
The Black versus White wealth gap in America is widening.
Black people continue to be over-represented in our nation’s unemployed and under-employed population while under-represented in government and corporate leadership.
Black businesses are under-resourced and struggling.
Maintaining good health and overall wellness remains a perpetual challenge with disproportionate numbers in the Black community suffering from chronic health conditions, both physical and mental, that adversely impact the quality of life for Black families and our society as a whole.
There is an African proverb that begins with the statement that “it takes a village.” ETV’s core belief is that it does indeed take a village to accelerate transformative, positive, sustainable change in the Black community. To achieve ETV’s overarching mission of Restoring Prosperity, Peace, and Power to the Black community, we must “empower the village” through strategic intervention and collective action.
ETV Success Equation
\[ (DTSP)^2=SUCCESS \]
D = Data-driven T = Targeted & Team-Based S = Strategic Solutions P = Propelled By Powerful Partnerships
Our Pillars
Empower The Village (ETV) has been focused on programs that fall under its 4 Strategic Pillars:
Economic Prosperity
Policy & Power
Academic Excellence & Career Readiness
Health & Wellness
Key Pillar: Economic Prosperity
ETV has launched its Marketing & PR Awareness campaign – Make Every Friday, Black Friday! and Black-owned business and community resource tool – The Village Black Pages. The campaign and resource work hand-in-hand and are centered around strengthening and encouraging sustainable support of Black-owned businesses to positively impact job and wealth creation, as well as achieving empowerment through ownership within the Black community that results from thriving businesses.
Make Every Friday, Black Friday!
ETV’s movement and multi-platform awareness campaign – Make Every Friday, Black Friday! – encourages all Americans interested in racial equity to take action to close the wealth gap between Black Americans and other Americans at least 1 out of 7 days each week (Fridays)! 1 out of 7 Americans (14%) is Black.
Spreading the word about how consumers can consistently leverage their individual spending power to support the Black community by patronizing Black-owned businesses is critical.
Village Black Pages
Village Black Pages™ (VBP) is a critical resource Americans can rely on to locate Black-owned businesses to support when responding to our charge to Make Every Friday, Black Friday!
VBP is our user-friendly, free online directory for finding Black businesses and key resources to support our community. Our goal is to elevate the overall prosperity of the Black community by building wealth and creating jobs.
Black Friday Challenges Test-Run
In order to test the efficacy of the Black Friday Challenges to garner greater consumer engagement and interest in black-owned businesses, we tested a subset sample’s performance in the challenges.
The Metrics
The following are the benchmarks through which we will measure success in our Black Friday Challenge initiative:
Immediate
These measures are the focus of this current analysis, they are measures of short-term impact:
Number of new businesses added to Village Black Pages
Reported Dollar ($) amounts spent by participants
Number of different businesses patronized and number of transactions (repeat customers)
Number of social media posts/shares highlighting VBP-listed businesses and/or Make Every Friday Black Friday movement
Long-Term
As this program’s scope is broadened and implemented we would expect to see the following broad goals met:
Increased revenue for small Black-owned business so that they can survive and thrive.
Recirculate more our dollars for longer periods of time within the Black community enhancing overall economic prosperity.
Improve VBP businesses’ ability to create new jobs and retain existing jobs within the community.
A cultural shift in consumer behavior, inclusion and equitable support of black-owned businesses
The Dataset
A small test group consisting of the Morristown Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. were given three of the Black Friday challenges and encouraged to compete amoung themselves.
The sample consisted of 8 participants (n=8). Data were collected over a 2 day period (March 27-28th).
Data Analysis
Overview
We begin with an overview of the data collected, provided below is a table of all the businesses patronized, the participants, and the amounts spent. Also included are whether the businesses are new nominations to the VBPs and what category of industry they fall under. All of our further analyses were conducted using this initial dataset.
| Business | Industry | Participant | Spendings | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensually Scented | Home & Garden | Cindy Flowers | $25.00 | FALSE |
| Glamorouz Jewels | Jewelry & Accessories | Cindy Flowers | $25.00 | TRUE |
| Reggie’s Roast.com | Grocery & Food Services | Jeannie Holman | $20.00 | FALSE |
| Deeply Rooted Wellness | Health & Wellness | Jeannie Holman | $39.00 | TRUE |
| T-Made Creations | Unknown | Jeannie Holman | $30.00 | TRUE |
| JA Spice | Restaurants & Bars | Bettie Jarvis | $30.00 | FALSE |
| Teflar.net | Clothing & Fashion | Kimberly Monroe | $202.00 | TRUE |
| Brandon Blackwood | Clothing & Fashion | Kimberly Monroe | $85.00 | TRUE |
| De Island Shop | Restaurants & Bars | Kimberly Monroe | $45.32 | TRUE |
| 4 Brothers Breakfast | Restaurants & Bars | Kimberly Monroe | $0.00 | TRUE |
| Hibiscus Island Grille | Restaurants & Bars | Ferlanda Nixon | $15.00 | FALSE |
| Montclair Flowers & Gifts | Florists | Ayo Sanderson Wilson | $80.98 | FALSE |
| Source of Knowledge Bookstore | Books & Publishing | Ayo Sanderson Wilson | $54.48 | FALSE |
| Sweet T’s | Grocery & Food Services | Lynn Wright | $30.00 | TRUE |
| Sweet Nina’s | Grocery & Food Services | Lynn Wright | $30.00 | TRUE |
| The Urban Cycle | Recreation & Sports | Naeemah Saint-Rose | $271.89 | TRUE |
| Woulibam Restaurant | Restaurants & Bars | Naeemah Saint-Rose | $27.72 | FALSE |
We can see that there were a total of 16 transactions made by 8 participants and resulted in a grand total of $1011.39. These total values are shown here:
| Total Number of Participants | Total Amount Spent | Total New Nominations | Total Number of Businesses Supported | Total Number of Transactions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | $1,011.39 | 10 | 17 | 16 |
We continue on by creating a barchart of the different businesses and how much was spent at each, this visual is here:
The clear outliers are Teflar.net and The Urban Cycle, a fashion boutique and bike shop respectively. We can see that the individual purchases made in these stores were far above the average cost. However when looking at type of industry, we note that the majority of the businesses are Restaurants and Food Services.
Summary Statistics
In order to better understand the Spending variable, we will determine its five-number summary - a set of descriptive statistics that provides information about a dataset. The table here provides theses summary statistics:
| Min. | 1st Qu. | Median | Mean | 3rd Qu. | Max | IQR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 25 | 30 | 59.49 | 61.11 | 271.89 | 36.11 |
We note a minimum transaction of $0, at 4 Brothers Breakfast, and a maximum of $271.89, at The Urban Cycle. Interestingly, the median is significantly less than the mean implying a right skewed distribution pulling the mean up towards the positive tail. The two high outlier purchases aforementioned likely explain the skew. The interquartile range (IQR), a good measure of distribution spread, is 36.11; telling us that the middle 50% of all observed values are within that range.
In order to better visualize this distribution, we have displayed a boxplot of the spending variable below:
Comparing Industries
From here, we should consider the types of businesses that were supported. What industries attract more consumers with the BF challenge? Which stand to benefit more? Knowing the answer to these questions will allow us to better formulate our marketing campaign, and better target the challenge to businesses that participants may be less interested in. Below, we have piecharts of total spendings at different industry types and total transactions at different industry types.
The piechart on the left represents industry proportions by total amounts spent. If we focus there, we’ll note that the grand majority of cash flow fell under the three categories of Clothing & Fashion, Restaurants & Bars, and Recreation & Sports. It is likely that single, large outlier purchases can cause a industry type to be overrepresented in this piechart, as the one large purchase at The Urban Cycle did for Sports & Recreation.
The piechart on the right represents industry proportions by total number of transactions. This plot shows that Restaurants & Bars, Grocery & Food Services, and Clothing & Fashion were the top three most frequented types of business.
We should remain aware: our uniform, small sample size limits the generaizability of these results to overall population shopping habits. We cannot know if the 8 participants here are representative of the population we are seeking to measure.
| Industry | Spendings | Number of Transactions | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clothing & Fashion | $287.00 | 2 | 28.38% |
| Recreation & Sports | $271.89 | 1 | 26.88% |
| Restaurants & Bars | $118.04 | 5 | 11.67% |
| Florists | $80.98 | 1 | 8.01% |
| Grocery & Food Services | $80.00 | 3 | 7.91% |
| Books & Publishing | $54.48 | 1 | 5.39% |
| Health & Wellness | $39.00 | 1 | 3.86% |
| Unknown | $30.00 | 1 | 2.97% |
| Home & Garden | $25.00 | 1 | 2.47% |
| Jewelry & Accessories | $25.00 | 1 | 2.47% |
The table above shows the types of industry for each of the businesses supported, as well as the number of transactions, the amount of spendings, and the percentage of spendings each industry makes up. The industries highlighted in red represent the bottom 5 percentage of spendings and number of transactions.
Projections
Limited observations can be made with an 8 person sample size, however we can extrapolate how larger populations would look assuming they followed similar spending trends in the BF Challenge as these 8 participants.
To that end, we have created a linear model using simple regression to help predict the relationship between number of participants and total amount spent. The equation below is the model written out in mathematical notation:
\[y = 131.63x-123.51\] Where x is the number of participants and y is the total amount spent. The 131.63 is the slope of the model, representing the relationship of our two variables; for every participant (x) added, the total amount spent goes up by 131.63. The -123.51 is our intercept value. We have the summary statistics of the linear model provided below:
##
## Call:
## lm(formula = `Total Amount Spent` ~ `Number of Participants`,
## data = BFChal_LMDat)
##
## Residuals:
## Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
## -102.378 -35.269 -7.618 51.877 98.312
##
## Coefficients:
## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) -123.51 60.83 -2.031 0.0886 .
## `Number of Participants` 131.63 12.05 10.928 3.49e-05 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
## Residual standard error: 78.06 on 6 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared: 0.9522, Adjusted R-squared: 0.9442
## F-statistic: 119.4 on 1 and 6 DF, p-value: 3.485e-05We want to pay attention to the residuals. Residuals are essentially the difference between the actual observed response values and the predicted response values. We should also look at Residual Standard Error - i.e. the measure of the quality of a linear regression fit. Looking here we see the residual SE is 78.06, meaning that, on average, the predicted total amount spent could be off by +/- $78.06.
For a visual representation we have our 8 participants and their amounts spent placed on a scatterplot. The red points represent observed values, while the green line are predicted values by our linear model:
Moving beyond the recorded data, lets look at a scatterplot of those same observed values along with some predictions. What does our model expect the total amount spent would be if we had 50 or 80 participants engaged in the Black Friday Challenge?
Keep in mind that actual values are red circles, meanwhile predicted values are red triangles. Even a cursory glance reveals how quickly the revenue towards black-owned businesses can build with reasonable increases in participant size. Considering the 70+ sorority chapter member potential, the over $10,000 that the model predicts can be raised with 80 participants is promising for the future of the BF Challenge.
Large-Scale Predictions
On a macro-scale, lets apply our linear model to the NJ population as a whole. According to Data Commons and the US Census Bureau (2019), the overall population of New Jersey is estimated at 8.882 million (8,882,000). Of that number, approximately 75% are considered adults (18 or older) and would be suitable for the Black Friday Challenge. Meaning, about 6,661,500 of NJ can be considered adults.
The same data sources gave 1.194 million (1,194,882) as the estimate of the black NJ population. The adult black NJ population is 896,161 if we follow the same 75% adults convention we used above.
Assuming we manage to engage a conservative 20% of the population with the BF Challenge message/marketing, we would have 179,232 of the black NJ population; 1,332,300 of the total NJ population.
A barchart is shown underneath this text for the total amount of revenue generated (total amount spent) based on the number of people participating. The first and last value are the important NJ population numbers we discussed above, and for a sense of depth we have provided round values such as 300,000 or 500,000 to fill the space.
Looking at the barchart we can see that growth increases greatly, even with just 20% of the adult black NJ population engaged over $23 million is being raised towards black-owned businesses. If we can expand to 20% of the total NJ population, that number grows to a extraordinary $175+ million.
For those interested in the exact values, we provide a table of all the observed and predicted values discussed up until this point. Here is the table below:
| Number of Participants | Total Amount Spent | Projection |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $50 | FALSE |
| 2 | $139 | FALSE |
| 3 | $169 | FALSE |
| 4 | $501 | FALSE |
| 5 | $516 | FALSE |
| 6 | $652 | FALSE |
| 7 | $712 | FALSE |
| 8 | $1,011 | FALSE |
| 50 | $6,458 | TRUE |
| 80 | $10,407 | TRUE |
| 100 | $13,040 | TRUE |
| 200 | $26,203 | TRUE |
| 179,232 | $23,592,291 | TRUE |
| 300,000 | $39,489,055 | TRUE |
| 500,000 | $65,815,174 | TRUE |
| 800,000 | $105,304,353 | TRUE |
| 1,332,300 | $175,371,319 | TRUE |
Conclusions
With a foundation backed by this data, we can be certain of a strong positive relationship between number of participants in the Black Friday Challenge and total amounts spent at black-owned businesses. As one variable increases, so does the other. This was borne out in the participants who we were able to actually record, as well as in the predictions we made based on that data. The linear model
There are limitations to consider:
The linear model assumes a linear relationship between our predictor and criterion variables continues in perpetuity. In reality, this may not be true. The total amount spent might stagnate as the number of participants increase or it could grow exponentially. Another shortcoming of this modelling lies in the sample it was extrapolated from - with such a small & uniform group, the sample may not be representative of the population we are attempting to measure. Therefore our projections may not be accurate to real life conditions.
Despite these limitations, we are fairly confident that an increase in participation in the Black Friday Challenges will lead to stronger revenue streams towards black-owned businesses.