CI & CNBC Using Social Media Analytics to Predict Business Outcomes

Analysts were expecting big gains from Kohl’s over the holiday weekend; it’s just they didn’t mention that to their customers. But CI and CNBC were listening and we were not surprised by the outcome. 

We had analyzed social media conversations related to Kohl’s along with 19 other retailers over the the Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday. Based on our analysis, we were able to categorize conversation into three segments:

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• “Black Friday Buzz” — the top stores people are talking about related to Black Friday sales and coupons
• “Shopping Right Now” — tracks conversations around top stores people are actually in or shopping online
• “Likely to Buy” — the top stores people are likely to buy something in

and then rank each of the retailers.

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Kohl’s was ranked was 14th out of 20th in the “Likely to Buy” category and Gap continued to struggle with each of their major brands at the bottom of the heap in the same category.  So, while the street was expecting a 2% increase for Kohl’s, our real-time analysis provided a more accurate and predictive sales outcome.

Check out the complete video to see how other retailers fared over the weekend and how their social media activity correlated to their sales numbers.