'Direct Response Spending' Map of America

When I was given this task, I though it might prove problematic to find a map that surprised me, because I thought I knew a fair amount about the U.S. So when I happened to stumble across this particular one about ‘direct response spending’, i.e. the use of a credit card after seeing an advertisement, it was a god-send. To say I was surprised is a bit of an understatement. I mean seriously, Wyoming, a state equivalent in size to the UK, with a population of little more than half a million, has the highest direct response transactions/spending in the whole of America! I would have thought that people in the most urbanized states, mostly on the East Coast, like New York and Massachusetts,  would have been most responsive to advertising because they are bombarded with it in densely populated areas. So it was no surprise at first to see New Jersey (the most densely populated state in the U.S.) coming in at 6^th on the list. But Wyoming was a surprise, as was Alaska. So how can this be explained? As I began to read the information regarding this map and started to consider the conditions people lived in, I found out that it might not be so strange to find that states with such a low population density would have the highest figures for direct spending. Instead, it actually made sense. In low population density states, the shopping facilities on offer would pale in comparison with states with big cities. People in these states are often quite isolated and would have to spend hours driving just to get into town. As the spokesman for Litle and Co. says, these are places ‘where brick-and-mortar retailers are fewer and further between.’ So why would people there bother wasting time driving to buy something, when they can just pick up the phone or go online and order it as soon as they find something they fancy on the TV or a catalog? When I realized this fact, the map made a whole lot more sense. Except for New Jersey. This completely contradicts the argument I just made, and it is difficult to know why. Together with Maryland, it is the only East Coast state represented in the top 10, and the general point made by the map is that the rate of ‘direct response spending’ tends to increase the further west you go. So there must be special factors at work here, and I’d like to know what they are.