NetBase, the Insight Discovery company, released on Wednesday the latest Brand Passion Index. This measures consumer insights around popular retail brands Target, Old Navy, JC Penney, Macy's, Sears, K-Mart and Walmart for the back-to-school shopping season.

Target.com

Target and Old Navy were associated with the most positive sentiment, while shoppers expressed more intense negative sentiment for K-Mart and Walmart, according to NetBase's ConsumerBase tool which surfaces emotions and passion levels associated with brands using Natural Language Processing technology.

Among the seven brands analyzed in ConsumerBase from a number of online sources (public internet, premium content from publishers and social media) between Aug. 2, 2009 and Aug. 2, 2010, Target had the highest volume of intensely positive feelings with 54 percent, followed closely by Old Navy which garnered the most passionate positive sentiment. On the other end of the spectrum, Walmart earned the most passionate negative sentiment at 59 percent.

Target not only received the highest volume of intense positive -- "love" and "like" -- feelings, but also the highest volume of chatter for helping shoppers stay within budget as a one-stop-shop for stocking up on back-to-school items.

JC Penney generated the same intensity of positive sentiment as Target, but in much smaller doses, generating far fewer comments from shoppers. Macy's and Sears both received a fair amount of chatter, but the positive sentiment for their brands was much less passionate.



By Rosie Hart. Source : Netbase.com