Analysis: Social holiday buzz grows
Los Angeles -- Earlier in October, shoppers were put off by holiday displays in store; now people are warming up to them. Analysis of social media buzz for the week of Oct. 30 – Nov. 5 by social media research firm Fizziology shows that positive conversation about displays rose from 15% to 22%, while negatives dropped from 76% to 42%.
It seems that Halloween was the cutoff point of when people found it acceptable, as 12% said stores should wait until after Halloween, and 8% said wait until after Thanksgiving. This social conversation surrounding holiday displays rose substantially since late October (251% week over week). Volume shot up on Oct. 31 due to people talking about the juxtaposition between Halloween products and Christmas decorations in some stores. It has remained high since then. Instead of people being angry about early decor, some are asking if it's OK for them to put up their personal decorations as well.
Conversation surrounding holiday/Christmas shopping continued to trend upward gradually week over week (a 109% increase, up to 291k mentions this past week). While the week of Oct. 23, only 24% of buzz was from consumers (rather than news outlets, stores and promotional material); however, the following week that percentage rose to 40% as people made it clear they're starting to prepare. Leading neutral chatter was many small businesses (especially via Etsy) that were starting to promote products and gift ideas via Twitter.
The percentage of people in the middle of shopping rose from 16% to 29% of organic mentions. Only 2% of feeds came from people announcing that they were done shopping for gifts. Eleven percent of shopper mentions came from people offering gift ideas, while 5% revolved around DIY (down from 8% last week). People sharing what they want for Christmas broke through in 11% of organic shopping conversation, and some were buying for themselves.