16) Buzz to Basket: Using Word of Mouth Data to Forecast the Impact of Marketplace Trends
A-Blog-a-Day Countdown to WOMMA's Word of Mouth Marketing Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
From WOMMA's soon-to-be-released book, Measuring Word of Mouth Volume 2:
Buzz to Basket: Using Word of Mouth Data to Forecast the Impact of Marketplace Trends
David Wisenfeld, Kate Niederhoffer, Michael Duffy, and Jonathan Carson of Nielsen BuzzMetrics explore the feasibility of using online consumer-generated media to predict marketplace trends, comparing their proposed methodology to a 5-day weather forecast. Just as meteorologists are able to predict the weather with some accuracy based on weather patterns, market researchers can analyze publicly-accessible online word of mouth to find patterns and answer such questions as: How long will a given phenomena last? How significant and widespread will it be? How do various trends and ideas relate to one another in the marketplace?
The team's approach focuses on correlating the volume and timing of online buzz among "influencers" with the volume and timing of "mainstream" participants and then correlating the trend's buzz volume with sales of trend-related products. They use the low-carbohydrate diet trend to exemplify this process and express measured optimism about the viability of this methodology.
Want to know more? Come see this paper presented at WOMMA's Research Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2006.
