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Black Friday Mania: Expert System Applied AI to Twitter to Understand Consumer Trends

21 November 2017

Leveraging the power of Cogito cognitive technology, Expert System analyzed a sample of 120,000 tweets to capture big retailers’ ad buzz and consumers’ purchasing intentions

– Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here. Starting Friday, November 24, shoppers can get a head start on their Christmas shopping with some of the biggest sales of the season. But what do consumers want for Black Friday this year? Are they tweeting more about Black Friday or Cyber Monday? What are the most popular purchasing categories and brands?

By harnessing the powerful AI features of the cognitive technology Cogito, Expert System analyzed a sample of 120,000 tweets in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Posted online from October 20 to November 20, 2017, tweets were associated with the most-used hashtags for the 2017 Black Friday and Cyber Monday such as #blackfriday, #BlackFriday2017, #cybermonday, #cybermondaydeals, #cyberweek etc.

In the analysis of tweets dealing with the two shopping days offers a clear picture of the buzz around the two days: 75% of tweets are focused on Black Friday deals while 25% only are about Cyber Monday offers but the clear split between these two days is tending to disappear. In this scenario, Amazon is the king: in tweets in all languages, in fact, Amazon is the most frequently mentioned retailer also thanks to a huge advertising campaign dealing with the upcoming cyber week.

What are the best selling products?

According to the sample of 120,000 tweets analyzed by leveraging cognitive technology Cogito, high-tech products category is dominating the Twitter scene, and Apple is disruptive. Regardless of the language of tweets, Apple is the most cited brand in the high-tech sphere and, in the never-ending battle between Iphone and Galaxy, iPhone wins (69% of English tweets dealing with smartphones deals are focused on iPhone, 31% on Galaxy).

Cyber week traditionally means also big deals on games and even in 2017 there is a lot of buzz around Microsoft Xbox and Sony PS4. By comparing the two products, in the English tweets MS Xbox wins (62% of English tweets dealing with gaming are focusing on Xbox).

More details on Expert System analysis are available here and in this infographic.