BANGALORE, December 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
IBM Analytics Reveals Trends and Preferences From More Than 150,000 Social Conversations
Smartphones, laptops, bikes and SUVs topped consumer's wish lists for this holiday season, as tracked by the latest IBM Social Sentiment Index on consumer shopping preferences in India. IBM found that style and design along with price accounted for the majority of the social buzz when it comes to purchasing preferences, indicating Indian consumers shift from being highly price conscious.
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In the era of Big Data, with the continued explosion of blogs, online forums and other social media channels, social listening analyzes unfiltered attitudes and actions, distinguishes between sincerity and sarcasm and even predicts trends as they surface online. Being able to quickly understand and respond consumer trends can help brands make more informed decisions through useful insights gleaned from the millions of social media interactions people have daily. Armed with relevant social data, decision-makers can better measure and understand public opinion on customer issues such as shopping during the 2013 festive season. The index leverages the latest IBM analytics technologies to help businesses predict trends and future consumer actions.
"A deep analysis of social media provides sign posts of the critical hits and misses. Marketers can use this data to have a view of how customers can be understood as individuals," commented Sivaramakrishnan Narayanan, Director, Business Analytics and Optimization, Global Business Services, IBM. Social media is increasingly influencing consumer purchasing decisions. IBM's latest report points out consumers' sophisticated way of leveraging social media; researching products, prices, promotions and reviews to decide on purchasing decisions. Following are the key trends that emerged from the IBM Social Sentiment Index for Consumer Shopping Preferences:
Top Consumer Purchases - Out of the top 10 products on consumers wish list, over 75 percent had wished for smartphones, laptops, bikes and SUVs.
Looking Beyond Price tags: - Underscoring Indian consumers move away from being price conscious, style and design emerged as the single most important variable governing preferences for formal wear. Price had very limited impact in this segment.
Top Consumer Preferences - Quality and price accounted for almost three quarters of influencing attributes when purchasing consumer electronics. Style, design and price jointly drove decisions for consumer durables - together impacting 46 percent of preference decisions. Style and design was also an important determinant for purchase of automobiles.
Automobile Deals - Customer care and price featured above style and design for preferences of four-wheelers. Nearly half of the consumer preferences for two-wheelers were influenced by size and space of the vehicle. Price was a criterion for only 26 percent. Affinity quotient - Notable amongst the various conversations were affinity between words - design and consumer durables; loan and travel and hospitality, perhaps indicating consumer's preference to purchase various travel packages customized to accommodate the festive holidays. "Upon studying the commentary on social media, it was found that users' and prospective users' of products and services were conversing more about style whereas recommenders were mostly focused on price in their commentary," added Narayanan.
IBM identified top categories and sub-categories of products based on consumers wishes recorded in iWish which was created by IBM, inviting consumers to record their product wish-lists. The wish-lists were then mapped to discussions and sentiment on various popular social media platforms to understand and analyze conversations. In all, 151,000 conversation strings were tracked. Further, predictive modeling analytics was applied to analyze key influencing factors that prompted consumers to buy a particular product.
About the IBM Social Sentiment Index
The IBM Social Sentiment Index uses advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies to analyze large volumes of social media data in order to assess public opinions. The Index can identify and measure positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared in public forums such as Twitter, blogs, message boards and other social media, and provide quick insights into consumer conversations about issues, products and services. Representing a new form of market research, social sentiment analyses offer organizations new insights into Big Data that can help them better understand and respond to consumer trends. For more information about IBM please visit: www.ibm.com/social-sentiment and follow the conversation at #IBMPopData
About IBM Big Data & Analytics
Each day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated by a variety of sources -- from climate information, to posts on social media sites, and from purchase transaction records to healthcare medical images. At IBM we believe that data is emerging as the world's newest resource for competitive advantage, and analytics is the key to make sense of it. IBM is helping clients harness Big Data & Analytics to provide insights needed to make better decisions, create value, and deliver that value to customers and society. IBM has the world's deepest and broadest portfolio of Big Data & Analytics technologies and solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware. For more information about IBM Big Data & Analytics, visit http://ibm.com/bigdataanalytics. Follow IBM Big Data & Analytics on Twitter @IBMbigdata and @IBMAnalytics.
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