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)

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Here are the top terms related to Walmart:
Top Terms:

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Here 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.

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Here are the top terms related to Best Buy:
Top Terms:

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Here are the top Hashtags:

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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.

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Here 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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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.

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Here 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.

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Here 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.

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Here 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.

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Here 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).

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Here 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
+1 703-537-9394
georgiaferretti@elifemonitor.com

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

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