May 16, 2008

Consumer Spending in the U.S., Piece by Piece

We hope some of you had the opportunity to swing by your local Likemind coffee morning today. PSFK was lucky enough to meet some likeminds in both Brooklyn and Manhattan and share in the mutual enthusiasm over Rob Walker’s soon-to-be-released book, Buying In (thanks, Random House!). The book and conversation inspired us to do a little digging around about consumption - and serendipitously, we came across this neat interactive infographic featured a couple of weeks ago in the NY Times. The treemap shows how much the average U.S. consumer spends on 84,000 products in some 200 categories, including utilities, rent, fast food, car expenses, apparel, and more. As expected, the larger sections of the map represent more spending, and each section can be highlighted and zoomed in on for more detailed info.