Social Media Analytics

RESTON, Va. — Beauty brand L'Oréal USA is leveraging Clarabridge, a provider of sentiment and text analytics for customer experience management, to monitor what is being said in real time about its 27 brands across social media outlets, including website reviews, product reviews, blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

The move will enable L'Oréal USA to automatically route consumer insight to the right people and more effectively engage with its consumers.

ARMONK, N.Y. — In-store sales of women’s clothing are expected to see a 9.2% increase in the third quarter of 2012 versus the year-ago period, according to a just-released IBM analytics-based forecast of U.S. retail sales data. The report predicts a 6.2% increase in sales of children’s clothing and a 5.2% increase in footwear. Men’s clothing, however, is forecast to lag, dropping 6.7%.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada -- A recent survey of more than 6,500 U.S. consumers found that Americans consult their social media apps before, during and after retail store visits.

The survey, conducted by customer experience management solution-provider Empathica, found that mobile and social customer experience strategies are becoming more important than ever for brands, with nearly three in four consumers using Facebook to make retail and restaurant decisions.

Walmart will have to trust that their @WalmartLabs team is ready to take on the growing challenges of the company's online business now that Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman have stepped down as co-heads.

Harinarayan and Rajaraman became the heads of @WalmartLabs last year when Walmart bought their company Kosmix as a means of enhancing its e-commerce platform through social media.

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You can learn a lot by monitoring consumer conversations in social media. It can predict political elections, the Oscars and even the next reality show winner. If you are a CPG marketer, social media can also be a real-time predictor of your new product’s success.

The phrase “big data,” is all the rage these days and IBM made a major move to drive growth.

Washington, D.C. -- Consumers are using Pinterest to engage with retailers more than Facebook or Twitter, according to a survey released Thursday by Shop.org, comScore and The Partnering Group.

Additionally, the “2012 Social and Mobile Commerce Study” discovered that one third of smartphone owners who shop online share their location with a retailer.

WAYNE, N.J. — Toys"R"Us is continuing its support of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure for all children with cancer, through in-store and online fundraising as well as a social media campaign. Beginning this Friday, June 1 through Tuesday, July 31, the company will "Help Fight Childhood Cancer, One Cup at a Time" with an in-store and online fundraising campaign benefiting ALSF.

Armonk, N.Y. -- Survey results released Thursday by IBM said that Americans are increasingly upbeat about their plans for the Memorial Day weekend, with a huge increase this year in the amount of people talking about traveling and spending compared to last year.

According to the IBM Social Sentiment Index, the "Desire Ratio" – the proportion of positive versus negative comments about shopping – increased by a factor of five for this Memorial Day compared with last year.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Sears is encouraging customer feedback for the products it sells by offering shoppers the chance to vote for their favorite participating charity every time they post a product review. Through its "Love/Hate: Share Your Thoughts, Send Some Love" project, Sears is offering customers the chance to share their opinion -- good or bad -- on products and in return vote for one of four charities to receive a grand prize of $100,000. The participating charities competing for the grand prize  include the American Cancer Society, St.