Report: Amazon claims top spot in social ranking

The real retailer winners are those that truly “listen” to their customers, and then use learned details to motivate consumers to shop.



By perfecting this practice, Amazon.com has earned the highest amount of mentions and awareness across social networks, and Tiffany & Co. was the most passionately and positively discussed brand.



These findings are based on “The 2016 NetBase Retail Brands Report,” which monitored more than 430 million social posts to gauge how closely the world’s leading retail brands are listening to new and existing customers on social media, and what brands can learn from social to successfully drive sales. Based on conversations across the social Web, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and millions of other sources between July 28, 2015 and July 27, 2016, the report measures the volume of conversation, awareness through impressions, reach, net sentiment and brand passion.



The brands were broken into the following categories: pharmacy and convenience stores, discount, big-box, e-commerce, clothing, luxury, shoes, athletic, department store, grocery and office supply.



“The holy grail is leveraging what you learn online – such as what really motivates your audience to click and purchase – and translating these findings into monetary return on investment [ROI] for your business,” said Paige Leidig, CMO at NetBase.



With overall net sentiment of posts hitting 58%, and a 69% passion index, consumers display a mixed bag of emotions and attitude toward the retail industry. Amazon is the most-loved retail brand when it comes to best connecting and engaging with their customers, followed by Nike and Best Buy.



However, the retail behemoth and its footwear counterpart still has some work to do when it comes to measuring passion. Zappos has more passionate customers than both companies, despite having smaller volume of conversation, the report said.



From a category perspective, luxury retail, discount and e-commerce ranked highest on the brand passion index, a point revealing that consumers are most positively engaged with brands in these categories. However, department stores and big-box retailers lead in social mentions, owning 39% and 35% of the conversation, respectively.



When looking at what categories as a whole are most loved, luxury retailers, discount retailers and e-commerce brands lead the pack. Conversely, department stores (37%), grocery (36%) and office supply (30%) ranked lowest on the brand passion index, which looks at sentiment of posts compared to their passion intensity. This illustrates that they have the most to learn from listening to customers across social networks, the report summarized.



“It’s clear that some brands are doing a much better job than others when it comes to meeting customer expectations regarding products or customer service,” said Leidig. “Wherever they stand, each retail brand has the opportunity to leverage social analytics to better understand their customers’ wants, dislikes and desires to best cater to their needs.”