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From Sentiment to Insight
How Social Networking Can Support
Engaged, Customer‐Centric Retailing
A Prospective View
August 2009
Sponsored by:
By:
Brian Kilcourse and Paula Rosenblum
Managing Partners
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................................... 1
The Social Networking Phenomenon ........................................................................................................ 1
Communities of Interest Spring Up Overnight .......................................................................................... 1
Consumer Sentiment as the New Psychographic ...................................................................................... 2
Methodology ............................................................................................................................................. 2
BUSINESS CHALLENGES: Divining Demand ..................................................................................................... 3
Retailers Ask Themselves What Consumers Want To Buy ........................................................................ 3
Consumers Are Mostly Anonymous To Retailers ...................................................................................... 3
The Consumer Has All the Power .............................................................................................................. 4
Retailers Respond as Best They Can .......................................................................................................... 4
THE OPPORTUNITY: Becoming an Engaged Customer‐centric Retailer ......................................................... 5
Social Media: A New Way to Engage ......................................................................................................... 5
Natural Language Processing Technologies ............................................................................................... 6
What Does the Engaged Customer‐Centric Retailer Look Like? ................................................................ 6
But How To Start? ...................................................................................................................................... 7
Getting Beyond The Squeaky Wheel Syndrome ........................................................................................ 7
Begin To Develop A Roadmap ................................................................................................................... 8
THE RISKS: Don’t Start Unless You Plan to Follow Through ........................................................................... 9
Turning Sentiment Into Insight – Is Retail Ready? ..................................................................................... 9
The “Network Effect” As A Double‐Edged Sword ...................................................................................... 9
Avoid Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg ................................................................................... 10
APPENDIX A: Relevant Reference Material ..................................................................................................... a
APPENDIX B: About Our Sponsor ................................................................................................................... b
APPENDIX C: About RSR................................................................................................................................... c
Figures
Figure 1: Difficult to Divine Consumer Demand ............................................................................................. 3
Figure 2: Continually Increasing in Importance .............................................................................................. 5
Figure 3: Social Media Feedback in Context ................................................................................................... 6
OVERVIEW
THE SOCIAL NETWORKING PHENOMENON
In the late 20th century, quite a bit was written about the isolation inherent in modern day
society. Robert Putnam famously documented the decline of what he called “social capital” in
his groundbreaking book Bowling Alone1. Putnam observed that while more US citizens were
bowling than ever before, the number of people belonging to bowling leagues had dropped
precipitously. He used this as a metaphor for the decline of community activities and
connections in general (and supported his hypothesis with compelling statistics).
Putnam’s view may have been US‐centric, but technology‐dominated, isolated societies are a
world‐wide phenomenon. The only question outstanding was “Can humans sustain this kind of
isolation, or will they find new ways to connect?” To use Putnam’s vernacular, “How could we
re‐build the social capital we’d lost?” The answer to that came shortly thereafter, and was
already nascent in community web sites like iVillage.com. Computers and technology, the very
things that had fostered isolation would bring people together in ways never imagined before.
The web birthed MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook and a new era was born – the age of Social
Networking. The viral nature of social networks can enable a single person to trigger thousand
or even millions of impressions.
COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST SPRING UP OVERNIGHT
Social networks make it possible for people to communicate in a new way. Social media
networks such as Facebook hold a mind‐boggling amount of information about a shopper. They
not only know that she has clicked on certain content (as search engines like Google and Yahoo
do), but also her name, where she lives, her age, specific areas of interest, and even what she
looks like. Such identifying information makes it possible for those with common areas of
interest to find each other easily and exchange points of view. It helps also consumers find a
common voice.
For example, Canadian country music artist Dave Carroll posted a video on YouTube to complain
about United Airlines baggage handlers. That video was viewed over 4.5 million times within a
month of posting. The network effect of social media can cause “word of mouth” epidemics
unlike anything that retailers have ever seen before.
Initially thought to be the realm of Millennials, by 2009 Facebook reported a 276% growth in 35‐
54 year old users. This was double the growth rate in 20082. This demographic is important for
1
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D Putnam, Simon & Schuster, 2000
2
http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009‐facebook‐demographics‐and‐statistics‐report‐276‐growth‐in‐35‐54‐year‐old‐
users/
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several reasons, but for our purposes, it matters because it represents the “biggest spenders,”
who are the primary target of world‐wide advertisers. In other words, even in a down economy,
there’s a lot of potential spending power in those social networks.
Along with the potential to give voice to millions of frustrated travelers (as in the video cited
above), mining the data available in Social Networks can also give retailers a look into the hot
buttons and trigger points of millions of potential shoppers. It can also help us wrap our minds
around the sudden shifts in ideas, opinions and taste so prevalent in the 21st century.
CONSUMER SENTIMENT AS THE NEW PSYCHOGRAPHIC
Ninety percent of retailers surveyed by RSR in July 2008 cited psychographic assortment
localization as a key to their merchandising success. Those retailers believe that along with
tailoring their merchandise mix to the demographics of visitors to their web sites and stores,
and the geographies within which they reside, understanding their inclinations are also
important. Are they empty‐nesters? Suburban? Conservative? Fast fashion adopters? Aspiring to
be and act like their parents?
Ironically, with all the science at their disposal and with ever increasing mass, retailers are as
isolated as the consumers they serve. Even with focus groups, outside databases, and legions of
buyers, retailers remain baffled by the vagaries of demand.
Suddenly, that data (and a lot more) is available. We have the opportunity to find out how
consumers feel. The challenge of course, is making sense of piles of 140 character “tweets,”
emails to customer service, and Facebook status updates and wall posts. But even an industry
accustomed to drowning in data has been forced to cry “uncle” in the face of this pile of
seemingly unstructured snippets.
The questions we attempt to answer in this brief report are straightforward:
• Can structure be brought to these mountains of unstructured bits and bytes
• Once structure is brought to it, can it be used?
• And if it can be used, what are the best uses of it – even in a down economy?
If structure can be brought, and the data can be used, the “sentiment psychographic” can be
used to help drive a new, more responsive retail enterprise. RSR calls this “The Engaged,
Customer‐centric Retailer.”
METHODOLOGY
In prospective reports like this one, RSR pulls together data points from a variety of different
sources and bring them together into a new whole. A list of RSR reference documents is in
Appendix A. We identify other sources in footnotes within the report itself. We supplement
these data points with interviews to add color and substance to our conclusions.
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BUSINESS CHALLENGES: DIVINING DEMAND
RETAILERS ASK THEMSELVES WHAT CONSUMERS WANT TO BUY
Retailers struggle to understand the dynamics of demand. The past is no longer prolog to the
future and retailers know it. They fret over under‐ordering and more recently, with a scarcity of
working capital, they worry about making the right inventory investments (Figure 1).
Top 3 Business Challenges
Consumers demand more localized assortments 44%
Even as demand is less predictable consumer expectations remain high.
CONSUMERS ARE MOSTLY ANONYMOUS TO RETAILERS
Most retailers only know consumers through the lens of “the market basket”. Even retailers
with sophisticated customer‐oriented business intelligence capabilities joining customer profiles
with detailed transactional data to determine “propensity to buy” only really know their
customers based on product affinities. Even 21st Century success story Amazom.com takes a
product‐centric view of customers; their buy recommendations are based on past purchase
history compared to the purchase histories of other consumers who have bought the same
item.
But today’s consumer wants more. The value of the retailer’s Brand is defined by how well
products are delivered at the right price with the right quality, wrapped up in the right
information and service, when and where the consumer needs them. In short, consumers want
solutions to their lifestyle needs. Today’s consumer routinely uses the Internet as a means to
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investigate the best value: quality, price, and availability. She is no longer un‐opinionated when
she walks into a store. In fact, she’s loaded with facts. Demand is created outside of the store,
potentially outside of the retailer’s control.
Winning retailers have learned to use the Internet as a lead‐generation engine for their stores
by making content about their products and services available on the Internet, as well making it
possible for the cross‐channel shopper to begin transacting before entering the store. Retail
winners know that their multi‐channel customers are more profitable than single channel
shoppers. Savvy retailers have also learned to use internet search data to gain an understanding
of what consumers are looking for, and to work with Internet search engines to put messages in
front of the people most likely to see their value.
But in all of these methods, the data is about retailer actions. A fundamental question remains:
what does the consumer have to say? As it turns out, plenty.
THE CONSUMER HAS ALL THE POWER
The rate of technology change in the past fifteen years has shaken the fundamentals of retailing
to its core. In 2007, retailers reported their biggest business challenge to be “Consumer
complaints about their in‐store experience3.” We observed at that time how social networking
had set retailers back on their heels and retailers were creating various mechanisms in an
attempt to stanch the volume of complaints and criticisms.
These “squeaky wheels” have sent a message. Retailers have now set about the work to provide
consistent convenience across all their selling channels.
RETAILERS RESPOND AS BEST THEY CAN
Retailers now have a variety of mechanisms available to sense the new psychographic of
consumer sentiment. They have Facebook and Twitter pages, feedback forms on their web
sites, outsourced help desks to speak with frustrated consumers and product review sections of
their web site. This still leaves us with the same fundamental question: how can retailers sift
through these volumes of unstructured data to find trends? If there is such a thing as “The
Wisdom of the Crowd,” is it found in the loudest voices, or behind the noise, in the most
persistent sentiments? How can retailers blunt the network effect of negative opinion before it
becomes epidemic, and how can they use the network effect in a positive way to create a bias
for their products and services?
These are the challenges that winning retailers are trying to address through social media.
3
Technology‐enabled Customer Centricity in the Store, by Paula Rosenblum, originally published by
RSAG, March 2007
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THE OPPORTUNITY: BECOMING AN ENGAGED CUSTOMER‐CENTRIC RETAILER
SOCIAL MEDIA: A NEW WAY TO ENGAGE
With traditional media, the dialogue is one‐way and feedback is indirect. Retailers and their
partners spend millions advertising their products and services, and feedback comes in the form
of success or failure at the checkout counter. “Web 1.0” e‐retailing is fundamentally no
different: marketing messages are delivered via the media, and consumers respond by searching
and purchasing. “Web 2.0” social media however is fundamentally different. It’s direct and two‐
way; in a word, conversational. It has the potential to return “social capital” to the fabric of
retailing – much like conversations at the corner stores of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but
on a larger, more high‐tech scale.
Of course, as in real life, the best way to have a conversation is to start one. In the past two
years retailers have begun awakening to the opportunity inherent in engaging social media to
make their products and services known to members of those networks (Figure 2).
Perceived Opportunity from Social Networks or Other
Forms of Direct Customer Input
2008 2009
56%
46%
31% 33%
23%
11%
The question for retailers is, how engaged should they be and how do they collate and quantify
shopper sentiments?
First of all, messages from various social media, whether in the form of Facebook postings, email
messages, blog entries, or Twitter “tweets” are not data – they are sentiments expressed in
plain language. Short of having an army of call center analysts manually codifying such
messages, retailers have no non‐technical way of turning that unstructured text into structured
data, so that it can in turn be transformed into true insights.
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NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES
The good news is that technologies do indeed exist to analyze natural language and
contextualize unstructured data from social media allowing us to generally interpret a sentiment
as either positive or negative. Pertinent words can be extracted (for example, mention of a
product or a store). These extracted and contextualized bits of information can be structured
into a data format that can be processed by the retailer’s internal business intelligence systems.
Formatted data could be matched to internal databases including the Customer database to
help prioritize sentiment from loyal customers vs. “noise” from an amorphous crowd. Based on
the nature of the contextualized sentiment, an appropriate alert can be triggered to the
appropriate customer service representative.
WHAT DOES THE ENGAGED CUSTOMER‐CENTRIC RETAILER LOOK LIKE?
Retailers capture a tremendous amount of internally generated information from their
transactional systems (Figure 3). Historically, that information has been used to develop
forecasts and merchandising plans (product assortments, allocations, price, promotions) as well
as marketing strategies, to develop operational plans (store plans, labor plans), and to track
performance (financial and sales information). Retailers also brought in externally generated
data to gain market and competitive intelligence, to help them focus their effort on increasing
market share and profitability of key categories of products.
Source: RSR Research, August 2009
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In the 1990’s, the advent of loyalty schemes and multi‐channel retailing enabled retailers to
identify customers individually and engage with them in new ways, focusing marketing efforts
on those most likely to take advantage of offers in order to build loyalty, and offer new ways to
deliver value to consumers. Some retailers have studied click‐track and search arguments from
their own websites and externally generated on commercial websites to better understand what
consumers are looking for.
But in a faster paced, more unpredictable world, getting closer to customer sentiments becomes
a vital tactic for proactively managing customer satisfaction. Measuring sentiment and marring
that new data to customer‐specific and market intelligence enables the retailer to quickly assess
the impact of its actions. Plus, it creates a new one‐to‐one touch point to the consumer. No
longer is the retailer solely dependent on the store clerk to create that “moment of truth”
impression on the consumer.
BUT HOW TO START?
For retailers who haven’t begun experimenting with the two‐way communications capabilities
of social media networks, an obvious question is, “how do we begin?” The question should be
answered as part of the retailer’s overall cross‐channel marketing strategy. Issues that need to
be addressed include:
• One, a few, or many social media networks? Which ones?
• What are the intended objectives of the engagement? Promote the Brand (eg.
community involvement)? Product promotions? Special one‐time offers? Employment
opportunities? Employee support? Customer support? Special services? Corporate
communications?
• Organizationally, who will “own” social media communication?
• How will “success” be measured?
• Will IT support be required?
• Will there be involvement from internal support organizations? What level of
involvement?
• How will we separate out the “noise”?
GETTING BEYOND THE SQUEAKY WHEEL SYNDROME
A second important aspect of any good conversation is in listening. Retailers need to decide up‐
front what they will do with the direct feedback that they get from social media. Like any other
data, this new information must be processed. For example, where do employee complaints go
to? Customer complaints about products? About services? Suggestions? Corporate inquiries?
Just as in face‐to‐face communications, responses to social media can come in three flavors:
• Competitive listening (not recommended): where the listener is more interesting in
his/her own point of view than the other party’s;
• Passive listening: where the listener absorbs but does not verify the message;
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• Active listening: where the listener engages, feeds back and verifies the message and
commits to follow up.
In the case of the business use of social media, retailers should develop use cases based on
the objectives that have been established for the two‐way communications.
BEGIN TO DEVELOP A ROADMAP
As experimentation with social media evolves, retailers need to begin thinking of a future
scenario where social media sentiment is interwoven into the business as customer insight. To
that end, the long term impact of data derived from social media on people, process, and
technology need to be analyzed. One way to approach developing a roadmap is to map these
data to the internal business processes that are impacted. That in turn exposes the impact to
technologies that support the processes, and the people who execute those processes.
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THE RISKS: DON’T START UNLESS YOU PLAN TO FOLLOW THROUGH
TURNING SENTIMENT INTO INSIGHT – IS RETAIL READY?
As retailers came to learn in the early part of this decade, one aspect of the Internet that can be
both exhilarating and alarming is that it is without boundaries, and the potential for rapid
scaling is real. The challenge for retailers when it comes to any technology‐enabled consumer
capability is that although the developmental stages of the new capability may be very slow,
consumer adoption is often dramatic and very rapid. Those retailers that choose to tap into
consumer sentiment as expressed on social media networks could find themselves
overwhelmed very quickly by trying to respond to every issue raised. Nor should they be
tempted‐ not everyone who may comment on service issues or product quality concerns is a
customer (or ever likely to be). An inherent problem with the “noise” from social networks, e‐
mails, and other forms of electronic sentiment is that there is no way to rank their importance,
and so they tend to be handled first‐in‐first‐out, if at all.
Technology should play an inevitable role in resolving the challenge of getting personal with the
right customers through the use of sophisticated technology to turn “unstructured” sentiment
into usable data that can then be meshed with other internal information to create insights.
However, most retailers don’t see the connection between the challenge of consumer
unpredictability, the opportunity of creating a single Brand identity across all channels, the use
of social media to get direct consumer input – and technology. In another study published by
RSR in May 2009, it was revealed that only 30% of retailers (and 32% of winners) rate “helping
the company win new customers and retain current customers” as a top expectation of the IT
function within their companies.4 Clearly, the industry needs to be informed as to the new
possibilities. But one thing should be clear: if retailers aren’t ready to fully engage and process
social media feedback that they themselves have triggered, they risk turning what was intended
to be a proactive outreach to new communities of consumers into a disincentive.
THE “NETWORK EFFECT” AS A DOUBLE‐EDGED SWORD
One of the benefits consumers experience from Social Networks is a sense of control. They can
speak to their peers. Those peers empathize. And the answers they receive to complaints and
concerns are unscripted, unlike those they receive from highly scripted help desk and customer
service personnel. BUT…these same consumers perceive their networks as their own.
Social Network Facebook’s attempt to change its privacy rules (and declare all posts – past,
present and future to be its property) met with serious user revolt. Eventually the technology
provider relented, and softened its stance. But as recently as June 2009, a message found its
way into thousands of users’ statuses, and even showed up in the New York Times.
4
IT and Business Alignment in Retail Benchmark Study, May 2009, © 2009 RSR Research LLC
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IMPORTANT ‐ To ALL FRIENDS. Facebook has agreed to let a third party advertiser use
your posted pictures without your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you
see the log out link. Select PRIVACY ‐ MANAGE. Select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Select
the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE
your changes. Please pass this around.)
On some level, it’s not clear that this was a new policy…but it went viral. Fast. The rapidity with
which the Network Effect created this uproar was profound. And it’s this very thing retailers
have to watch out for.
AVOID KILLING THE GOOSE THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN EGG
We’ve demonstrated in this report that retailers have a profound opportunity to mine and
categorize consumers’ interests and turn that data into dollars. But as we pointed out above,
consumer trust is tenuous at best. Any overt attempt to go beyond the consumer’s self‐defined
boundaries will result in an immediate stanching of the flow of information. Towards that end,
we see several imperatives:
1. Make privacy statements explicit and clear: Consumers detest surprises. Make sure
privacy policies are easy to read and understand, short, and succinct. While some may
say “Consumers don’t realize they are photographed at least 50 times a day…they have
no privacy,” one cannot presume on those consumers good will.
2. Always allow consumers to opt in: When a consumer becomes a fan, or a follower, or a
member of a retailer’s own community, the retailer should always ask permission to use
the information it gathers. Most of the time the consumer will agree (after all, that’s
why she’s there, after all), but this type of permission‐based marketing will avoid the
negative side of the Network Effect.
3. If a consumer requests a specific response, be sure to answer it: Few things are more
frustrating than taking the time to fill out an e‐mail feedback form and receiving an
email auto‐reply saying “Thanks for your feedback. We don’t have the time to answer
every request, but we’ll look into it.” The writer wonders, “Does this retailer really care
about my opinion? Why did these people ask me for feedback when they really weren’t
going to do anything with it? I’m going elsewhere.”
Even as we focus on aggregating the data we get on consumer sentiment, we also must
remember that sentiment is real. And consumers still have many different choices of networks
to join and retailers to buy from. Sometimes, disaggregating the data is as important as
aggregating it.
The mistake of the early 21st century was presuming that self‐service is always an effective proxy
for customer service. Retailers now recognize that self‐service technologies have their limits,5
5
The Customer Centric Store 2008, © 2008 RSR Research LLC
10
and sometimes, person‐to‐person interaction is important. If retailers are to avoid “killing the
goose that lays the golden egg,” we must remember the importance of the human touch. At
worst, it will put an end to a viral customer complaint, and at best, it will turn an unhappy
customer back into an advocate.
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APPENDIX A: RELEVANT REFERENCE MATERIAL
We have used data (directly or indirectly) from the following benchmark reports as background
for this document. All these reports are available for download from RSR’s web site.
Precision Inventory Management in the Age of Localization: Benchmark Report 2009, by Nikki Baird and
Brian Kilcourse, August 2009
Walking the Razor’s Edge: Managing the Store Experience in an Economic Singularity, by Brian Kilcourse
and Paula Rosenblum, June 2009
Customer‐Centric Merchandising: Driving Differentiation through Localization, Benchmark Report: 2008,
by Paula Rosenblum and Steve Rowen, June 2008
IT and Business Alignment in Retail, by Brian Kilcourse and Paula Rosenblum, May 2009
The Customer Centric Store: Benchmark Report 2008, by Paula Rosenblum, Edited by Nikki Baird, June
2008
The Next Generation of Business Intelligence: Driving Customer Insights Across the Enterprise, by Brian
Kilcourse and Paula Rosenblum, August 2007
Technology Enabled Customer Centricity in the Store, by Paula Rosenblum. Originally Published by RSAG,
March 2007
a
APPENDIX B: ABOUT OUR SPONSOR
SAP is the leading provider of application solutions for the retail industry. SAP helps retailers of
all sizes to understand, anticipate and inspire their shoppers by providing a compelling shopping
experience. The SAP® for Retail solution portfolio provides specific solutions for retail companies
in the food, fashion and hardlines businesses. The solution portfolio is built around understanding the
shoppers, or Shopper Insight, and consists of building blocks that cover the areas of Merchandise Lifecycle
(including planning, merchandise lifecycle pricing and promotion management); Supply Chain (forecast &
replenishment, supply chain planning and execution); Shopper Experience (workforce management,
customer loyalty and a portfolio of POS solutions); and Corporate Operations (finance and human
resources).
Learn more about SAP at http://www.sap.com/retail/
b
APPENDIX C: ABOUT RSR
Retail Systems Research (“RSR”) is the only research company run by retailers for the retail industry. RSR
provides insight into business and technology challenges facing the extended retail industry, and thought
leadership and advice on navigating these challenges for specific companies and the industry at large.
RSR’s services include benchmark reports covering the state of retailer technology adoption for topics
ranging from merchandising and supply chain, store operations and workforce management, to customer‐
facing and multi‐channel technologies. Custom research reports provide more in‐depth views into topics
of industry interest, and advisory services help retailers and technology vendors make the most of the
insights RSR provides. To learn more about RSR, visit www.rsrresearch.com.
Copyright© 2009 by Retail Systems Research LLC • All rights reserved. No part of the contents of
this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the
permission of the publisher. Contact research@rsrresearch.com for more information.
c