E.Life United States: Research on Retail Brands befor Black Friday

Buzz monitoring and analysis of retail brands leading up to Black Friday

www.elifemonitor.com

These were the brands analyzed:


All of the mentioned brands had their Twitter buzz increased in relation to Thanksgiving and Black Friday. The event is highly anticipated, and many tweets discuss the advertisements as well as shopping issues such as waiting in lines.

Some brands are using Twitter as a tool to seek new employees, especially temporary employees for this busy time of the year. This also showed up in tweets.

Some highlights of this research: Best Buy had parallel attention over a singer’s release and signing event, RadioShack has tried to promote their own version of Black Friday entitled ShackFriday, which was not widely accepted in the eyes of the Twitter community. Macy’s tweets were all about the parade, Kohl’s attention came from the store’s opening at 3:00am, and JC Penney had only a very modest twitter buzz. More details are presented in the following slides…


Tweets collected leading up to Black Friday (11/18-11/25)

The Tweets include posts, mentions, hashtags and retweets related to 9 previously chosen brands.

The brands we monitored are: Best Buy, JC Penney’s, Kohl's, Macy’s, Radio Shack, Sears, Target, Toys R Us and Walmart


The total number of tweets analyzed was 281471

The most mentioned retail stores:

TOP 5:Walmart (156000)Best Buy (47552)Macy’s (41950)Target (17692)Sears (8349)

Followed by:Toys R Us (6359)

Kohl‘s (2401)Radio Shack (966)JC Penney’s (202)

buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Walmart:

Top Terms:

buy(1095)gHere are the top Hashtags:

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Outcome:Walmart had more than three times as many tweets as any of its competitors. This alone shows the chain’s popularity and ubiquity nationwide. #BlackFriday was the second most used hashtag, which indicates a high level of reach for the company’s Black Friday advertisements.

It is important to point out, however, that the most commented-upon event was not related to Thanksgiving or Black Friday. Justin Bieber, who is sometimes referred to as Twitter Prince – alongside Twitter Queen Lady Gaga and Twitter King Ashton Kutcher – has launched a new album called My World Acoustic. Three hashtags related to that album appeared in the top hashtags list (#myworldsacoustic, #myworldacoustic and #bl). Also related to the Justin Bieber phenomena, we have his twitter account ‘@justinbieber’, ‘rt’, tomorrow’ and ‘hits’ all in the top ten used words. The popularity of Justin-related tweets is so strong that the hashtag #MyWorldsAcoustic was used 5 times more than the #BlackFriday hashtag.

buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Best Buy:

Top Terms:




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Outcome:Best Buy had a solid buzz on the days before black Friday (around 47552 Tweets). Black Friday has certainly boosted the number of tweets as “black” and “friday” were two of the top three most mentioned terms. The hashtag #Blackfriday was the most used, and was used twice as often as the second most used hashtag, #jobs.

Other extra info that came through tweets was the popularity of singer Nicki Minaj, as she took part in a CD signing event at Best Buy with live Internet broadcasting. Her tweet account @nickminaj was the fifth most-mentioned term and #pinkfriday (the name of her album) the third most-used hashtag. Finally, a considerable number of tweets related to jobs showed up as the hashtags #tweetmyjob, #job and #jobs all made to the top 10 hashtags. This shows Twitter’s value as an effective tool for job and talent searching, be it for temporary or permanent positions.


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Macy’s:


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And Hashtags:


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Outcome:Macy’s Parade was obviously mentioned many times. As it is automatically associated with thanksgiving, the parade has taken over the top terms and hashtags, specially because it is a broadcasted event and people tweet about what they are watching (the word watching was the sixth top term). #Blackfriday, however made it to the top 10 hashtags. As a whole the tweets about the brand are positive and the parade is a crowd pleaser.

“Kanye” and “ West” made it to the top 10 terms, because of his presentation at the 84th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade


Here are the top terms related to Target:


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Here are the top Hashtags:


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Outcome:Most of the top terms and top hashtags refer to Black Friday. On the top terms we have “line”, “4am”, “deals”, “robbing”, “ houses” all referring to Black Friday. The last two refer to the popular (very retweeted) joke: “While you're all in line at Target at 4am, I'm gonna be robbing your houses to get my own #BlackFriday deals” by popular actor and Twitter user @GaryJBusey.

When it comes to hashtags, #BlackFriday was a hit as it was used 628 times (rating as the most used hashtag) and the #target (which rated second) was used 57 times.

Other relevant hashtags were #pinkfriday (referring again to Nicki Minaj’s new album), #yelp (referring to an geo-locator application much like Foursquare) and job-related hashtags which once again shows Twitter as a tool for hiring/seeking professional contacts.


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Sears:




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Outcome:With Sears, the fact that the stores were open on Thanksgiving generated almost as much buzz as the Black Friday sales.

Other than the regular buzzing around Black Friday ads, the tweets also revolved around Sears LG Cooking giveaway (as two related hashtags #cooking and #giveaway made the top 10 hashtags) and job opportunities.


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Toys R Us:




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Outcome:With Toys R Us as well as with the other brands, #Blackfriday was the most used hashtag and among the top ten recurring terms. In this case, the terms “black” and “ Friday” rated second and third most-used. The image of this company on Twitter is as bright as it can be, with nostalgic hashtags such as #rememberwhen climbing up to be some of the most used hashtags related to the store.

Two other notable aspects show the popularity of Toys R US within geo-locator applications (FourSquare’s #4sq hashtag was the second most used) and very little attention paid to job offerings/searching. Perhaps the chain is using other tools to promote open positions and hiring.


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Kohl’s:




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Outcome:The image of Kohl’s brand on Twitter can be considered mixed. Comments are divided about the store’s quality and price. Black Friday was the top term and the number one hashtag. The clusters also point to recurrent mentioning of the store’s opening time: 3am. Be it to comment on how insane it seems to go there at three, to say you’re definitely going or just to inform others about the time they were opening, this ended up being the most recurrent topic.

Two other topics were found: Kohl’s uses Twitter as a job opportunities tool and this topic has come up often. The joke “My family can't afford the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade so we're watching the Kohl's Parade” has become highly retweeted.


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to Radio Shack:




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Outcome:In this Black Friday clash of titans RadioShack tried hard to do something new, promoting their very own black Friday hashtag, #ShackFriday. It did not catch on as well as it might have. Many people seemed to be unaware that #Shackfriday is RadioShack’s Black Friday or did not think the promotion was a good idea.

Two other interesting discoveries are the number of tweets related to Android products (#Android was the fourth most used hashtags) and a glitch in one of RadioShack’s FourSquare badges (#importfail made the list as the ninth most used hashtag).


buy(1095)gHere are the top terms related to J.C. Penney:




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Outcome:Among the brands in this research, JC Penney’s had the smallest amount of buzz. Black Friday has made the top 10 Hashtags and Terms, though.



Georgia Ferretti+1 [email protected]

Technology

E.Life United States: Research on Retail Brands befor Black Friday