Sears a surprise winner in social media
It may be hard to believe (considering its financial troubles), but Sears was the most popular U.S. department store on Facebook during the 2014 holiday shopping season, according to a new study.
The data also show that Walmart.com was the most popular mass merchant store site.
The findings come from a new study by Searchmetrics analyzing the number of Facebook likes, comments and shares for top U.S. retail store websites.
As consumers increasingly use Facebook as a discovery tool for finding product information online, it’s becoming increasingly important for retailers to have their website pages referenced on the social network.
The Searchmetrics study analyzed the number of weekly Facebook likes, comments and shares for pages from the websites of nine top US department stores and three mass merchant stores during November and December 2014.
Sears topped the list of department stores with 12,032,546 Facebook links (likes, comments, shares) for its web pages per week, followed by Kohls with 5,209,287 Facebook links per week. Walmart was the most popular of the three mass merchant stores analyzed with 40,312,744 Facebook links per week for its web pages during the period.
“It makes sense retailers are trying to generate social activity and mentions on Facebook as growing evidence shows that consumers are using social media as a key discovery tool for finding information online,” said Marcus Tober CTO and founder of Searchmetrics. “And of course it is a powerful recommendation if consumers see Likes, shares and positive comments about a retailer or its products from their own Facebook friends.”
As an indication of Facebook’s growing power in this area, Tober quoted a recent Forrester study of nearly 5,000 US consumers, which revealed that Facebook came second only to Google as a source for finding information –- ahead of TV ads and TV shows.
Here's the list:
Top department store websites on Facebook:
Sears.com 12,032,546
Kohls.com 5,209,287
Macys.com 2,331,733
Nordstrom.com 1,621,226
Jcpenney.com 393,934
Neimanmarcus.com 260,775
Saksfifthavenue.com 187,440
Belk.com 39,568
Dillards.com 4,405
Top mass merchant store websites on Facebook:
Walmart.com 40,312,744
Target.com 16,505,929
Costco.com 5,324,495