Case Study:
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
in US Retail & Ecommerce
Facebook performance of selected US Retailers during 2012’s
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Introduction
Black Friday marks the official beginning of the holiday shopping
season in the United States. The famous “day after Thanksgiving”
has become a consumer tradition for shoppers to get the best deals
of the year for the upcoming gift-giving holidays. Many deals are instore and are on a first-come-first-serve basis, which means
customers line up hours prior to opening to secure a “first spot in
line.”
Conversely, Cyber Monday offers another option of money-saving
shopping with brands offering major sales in their online stores.
Cyber Monday encourages shoppers to take advantage of the online
shopping experience with major brands offering huge discounts, free
shipping and many other incentives. Cyber Monday has continuously
grown into one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.
.
The Brands
The brands that tend to have the largest turnout for Black Friday are Walmart, Target, Best
Buy and Toys R Us, among many others. Socialbakers, along with these brands, chose to
look at the following list of retailers for our research into Black Friday and Cyber Monday:
Amazon.com, Kohl’s, Macy’s, eBay, jcpenney, Sears, Barnes & Noble and Bed Bath &
Beyond.
The time period for this case study is from November 16th to November 27th. Additional
metrics refer to Black Friday (Friday November 23rd) and Cyber Monday (Monday
Novemeber 26th).
Controversy
These retailers advertised earlier than ever opening hours, some
even on Thanksgiving night, rather than the actual Black Friday.
Target, for example, advertised opening their stores at 9pm
Thanksgiving night. Shoppers were not pleased with this decision
because it violated the holiday, time off from the real world and time
spent with family. Many customers stated they would boycott
Target this year for the retailers careless decision to open on a
holiday. We will find out later if this effected Target’s bottom line.
Similarly, Walmart experienced much pressure from employees
regarding Black Friday. Employees threatened a strike on the
profitable shopping day due to the stores planning to open on
Thanksgiving night. Employees, similar to Target shoppers, were
not happy about cutting their holiday short to go to work.
Thanksgiving, being a national holiday, has historically produced a
“ghost town” effect around cities as banks and retailers have been
collectively closed. However, Walmart employees would only
receive 3/4 of the holiday off, as they would need to be at work prior
to the opening time of 8pm in most cases to prepare for the
expected chaos.
Facebook Fan Growth
Measuring fan growth is very indicative of how these brands performed on Facebook during this
time. Although fan growth is not the only metric to monitor, during a period of high social media
activity it is a good metric to showcase each brand's ability to attract new fans to their Page.
Facebook Fan Growth: Stats
» During the monitored period, Walmart was the most successful by attracting 639,632 new
fans. This means that they now have an impressive 25,463,956 fans.
» Toys R Us had a 5.22% increase in their fan base. Thus making it the fastest growing brand in
terms of percent increase in relation to the total number of fans during the monitored period.
» On Black Friday itself, the Facebook Page with the largest growth was Amazon.com with 63
657, new fans.
» On Black Friday itself, Toys R Us was again the fastest growing brand in terms of percent
increase in relation to their total fan base with a growth rate of 1.51%. This means they added
49,684 new fans.
Engagement and Interactions
Socialbakers believes that measuring fan engagement is one of the most important metrics for
understanding the effectiveness of social media content or campaigns. Below we are providing
the calculation for the Facebook Daily Page Engagement Rate and
Likes + Comments + Shares on a given day
FB Daily Page ER =
x 100
Total Fans on a given day
» During the monitored period Walmart had the most number of interactions (Likes, comments
and shares) with 1,732,945. The second was Macy’s (1,147,603) followed by Target (524,959).
» The most engaging brands during this period were Toys R Us with an engagement rate (ER) of
0.2365 %, followed by Macy‘s 0.2232 % and eBay with 0.2091 %
» On Black Friday itself, the leader was again Walmart with 195,423 interactions, followed by Toys
R Us (107,395) and Macy‘s (60,791).
» On Black Friday itself, the most engaging brand was Toys R Us with a Daily Page Engagement
Rate of 3.2447 %.
Publishing Content
» During the monitored period, the most active Brand was Walmart, which published various
content 80 times, followed by Amazon.com (59 times) and Kohl‘s (55 times).
» Walmart was also the most active brand on Black Friday with 16 posts. The second most active
was Toys R Us (9 posts) and tied in third was Best Buy and Sears (7 posts).
» The most popular types of posts during this period were Photos and Statuses.
Top Engaging Content
» During the monitored period, the
most engaging post was a Macy‘s
photo of Hello Kitty from the
Macy‘s Thanksgiving Parade,
which received 375,874 Likes
9,598 comments and 23,097
shares and therefore had an ER of
4.4757 %.
» The second most engaging content
published was Walmart‘s Pumpkin
/ Apple Pie showdown photo,
which received 291,781 Likes,
10,159 comments and 21,381
shares. The ER was 1.2920%.
» The post with the third highest
engagement rate was Toys R Us‘
Black Friday Preview, which
received 32,853 Likes, 1,899
comments and 1,044 shares. The
ER was 1.1025 %.
Black Friday’s Hottest Content?
» On Black Friday, the most engaging post was a photo of the new WII U posted by Toys R Us.
This photo had an ER of 0.9043 %. The second and third most engaging posts were also by Toys
R Us with ER’s of 0.8465 % and 0.7030 %.
» The fourth most engaging Black Friday post was by Ebay and it was also of the WII U. This
signifies that brands and fans find this game to be one of this years Black Fridays hottest items!
How did brands respond on Black Friday?
» Some brands were responding to their fans while others were not.
» The most successful brand was Bed Bath & Beyond with a 100 % response rate to questions,
however, it received very few fan questions.
» Target, Koh‘s, Best Buy and Sears qualified as being socially devoted
(answered more than 65% of fan questions).
How did brands respond on Black Friday?
» Walmart received the highest number of questions (450), however, they failed to answer the
majority of these questions.
» Walmart also received the most amount of total posts , a total of 3,970. Many of these posts
were discussing the strike that the Making Change and its supporters were promoting via
Facebook initiatives. These posts varied in both negative and positive sentiment, depending on
whether the user was supporting Walmart or the Making Change initiative.
Cyber Monday: Fan Growth
On this year’s Cyber Monday there were more than $1 billion in USD sales made via ecommerce
platforms. With such a large success in retail sales, you are seeing e-commerce and retail stores
increasing their social media efforts to offer large discounts, free shipping and many other
incentives.
» Walmart increased their fan
base by 34,734
» Amazon.com increased their
fan base by 32,247
» Kohl’s increased their fan base
by 30,325
» The fastest growing brand was
Toys R Us by percentage was
Toys R Us, which increased
their fan base by .72%
» The fastest growing brand was Toys R Us by percentage was Toys R Us, which increased their
fan base by .72%
Cyber Monday: Interactions
Analysis of interactions is another step towards understanding how fans are engaging with a
page. This is even more critical to analyze on a day with especially high social media traffic
such as Cyber Monday.
» Ebay had a total of 91,826
fan interactions
» Target had a total of 35,628
interactions
» Toys R Us had a total of
29,780 interactions
Cyber Monday: Top Engaging Posts
» The “Rockin Ryder 3 in 1 Tahoe
Horse” received an impressive
39,680 Likes, 1,511 comments
and 3,491 shares.
» The second most engaging post
was also a photo that Ebay posted
of a “Badgley Mishka Satin
Pump.” This photo received
33,778 Likes, 4,963 comments
and 2,758 shares.
» The second most engaging post
was also a photo that Ebay posted
of a “Badgley Mishka Satin
Pump.” This photo received
33,778 Likes, 4,963 comments
and 2,758 shares.
Top Engaging Post: Ebay
Cyber Monday Takeaways
As Cyber Monday increasingly results in high ecommerce sales, it is critical that
companies are capitalizing on their social media pages and profiles to increase fan
growth, engagement, and social customer service. Implementing effective tactics to
accomplish these goals will lead to an even higher amount of ecommerce sales!
The Controversy Outcome
Target customers were extremely passionate about the retailer opening on Thanksgiving night.
But, consumers did not make the scene that Walmart saw. Despite the threat of a Black Friday
strike, WalMart was not feeling any pain when shoppers arrived. Shoppers were still bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed when the store opened. However, some strikes still took place. A Dallas based
store expected hundreds of strikers and protestors on the shopping day, but only 42 turned out.
Although the Dallas location experienced only a few dozen protestors, some cities saw massive
numbers. A Paramount Walmart store counted over 1,500 people in the streets protesting the retail
chain equipped with signs and strong opinions. We can see the impact of the strikes on Walmart’s
Facebook page when many people commented and expressed opinions about the situation.
The Controversy Outcome
Also promoting the Walmart movement was the organization, Making Change, which is “a campaign
challenging Walmart to act responsibly and help rebuild our economy.” Making Change can be
found on Twitter, Facebook and the organizations website. On Black Friday, many people were
discussing the strikes and protests that were expected to take place. The page received over 22,000
interactions on the shopping day. Also, during our selected period the fan base grew 28%. These
numbers indicate major success at creating buzz around Walmart and the Black Friday crisis.
Interesting Facts and Takeaways
» Overall both traditional retail and ecommerce brands performed well in terms
of increasing fan growth during their most lucrative season.
» The majority of brands published content that was engaging among their
respective fan bases. However, there is still room for improvement.
» There were surprisingly few fan questions (100 or less per brand) published to
the monitored brand pages. Target, Kohl‘s, Best Buy and Sears were the most
responsive of these brands
» Walmart received 450 questions, however, they responded to less than 25
questions and many of these were negative sentiment questions regarding the
Walmart strike.
» Overall, there is much room for improvement at prompting and answering
customer service questions via social media amongst all of these brands.
» With over $1 billion USD in sales from ecommerce on Cyber Monday,
companies like Ebay and Amazon.com were some of the best performing
companies during the monitored period.
We hope that you enjoy our Black Friday and Cyber Monday case study.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
You can reach our support team at [email protected].
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