Social Media Face Off: Kohl’s vs. JCPenney

While the holiday rush is long over for retailers, the season for social never ends. In this week’s Social Media Face Off, we put two retail store chains, Kohl’s and JCPenney, head-to-head to see which brand is cashing out in social. We’ve noticed that the two retailers have clearly stepped up their social game this year; Kohl’s made us laugh with live tweets during the 2014 Golden Globes and GRAMMY’s, while JCPenney was “caught” #TweetingWithMittens during the 2014 Super Bowl to show their support for Team USA in the Olympics.

In order to compare the brands in social, we set up search streams for each in the uberVU via HootSuite platform, making sure to include variations in spelling (i.e. jcpenney, J. C. penney, kohl’s, kohls). We’ve compared the results from the past two weeks in order to determine our winner.

Let’s see which retailer will come out on top.

Round One: Mentions

JCPenney takes the lead with 29,319 mentions, while Kohl’s lags behind with 21,855 mentions. However, this was by no means a landslide victory. A closer look at the trendline shows that each brand put up a solid fight. During February 14-16 and February 22, JCPenney dipped below Kohl’s, but finished strong and pulled in more mentions by the end of the month. The company also encountered two noticeable spikes. On February 13, news that the CFO was leaving the company created a lot of buzz on social media. On February 19, embarrassing photos showing the demise of the brand’s stores were published by Huffington Post and quickly took off in social. An advertisement by JCPenney from 1976 also went viral around the same time (details revealed in Round Three).

Winner: JCPenney

Round Two: Sentiment

Sentiment is a critical metric in social media marketing that helps gauge how people feel about a brand online. Kohl’s claims this round by not only earning a higher positivity score (34%) than JCPenney (32%), but also having 4% less negative sentiment. We’re happy to report that users are checking out major brand approval, along with clothes, in their shopping carts for Kohl’s in social.

Winner: Kohl’s

Round Three: Conversation Mapping

So far we’re tied 1-1 and it’s becoming a real battle of the brands. Who will step up in Round Three? We took a closer look at each brand’s uberVU conversation map to discover some of the most popular topics or keywords being associated with the retailers online. Kohl’s map contains normal store-related words like “shop”, “clothes”, and “size” that make sense for the brand. However, Kohl’s rakes in major points for having “love” and “great” take up 14% of mentions collectively on its map. We can now understand why it won in positive sentiment over JCPenney!

On the opposite end, “love” also appears on JCPenney’s conversation map, but the map is mostly dominated by the term “1976.” What’s this year have to do with the brand? Well, the Twitter account @HistoryinPics recently tweeted a JCPenney advertisement from 1976. While we’re all for nostalgia, we can’t forget about the famous saying “love conquers all.” As a result, we’re giving the win to this round’s most loved brand—Kohl’s.

Winner: Kohl’s

Overall Winner: Kohl’s

Even though JCPenney broke the registers with its large amount of mentions, the spikes in conversation were not all due to positive stories. With wins in sentiment and conversation mapping, Kohl’s showed us that brand love can go a long way in social. We’re happy to hand this week’s Social Media Face Off crown to Kohl’s.

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