Research: Hungry for Sales? We’re Slicing into the Passion for Pizza

As the capabilities of social listening technologies advance and the volume of social data grows, the opportunity for inventive social media research has arisen.

The days of total mentions and hashtag impressions analysis are dated. With intelligent platforms, like Brandwatch Analytics, we can start to explore unique social nuances.

In our Twitter Happiness report, we began using Twitter and Facebook to identify how happy or sad Americans were:

In our latest report, we’ve taken this more inventive social research one step further.

Getting a slice of the pizza posts

Fast food. More specifically, pizza. Pretty much everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure.

A not-so-rare treat that causes many of us to tell the world how happy we are with our cheesy, gooey, doughy purchases.

While measuring the raw volume of mentions about fast food has value, uncovering desire or intent in those mentions helps answer specific questions.

This novel breakdown of US states depicts intent to purchase mentions for Domino’s pizza toppings.

Which states prefer to load their bases with bacon? Which prefer peppers? And which like to pile their pizzas with pepperoni?

By only analyzing conversation that contained intent – e.g. ‘I want’ or ‘I need’ – the data more accurately reflects pizza preferences rather than general interest.

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Pepperoni led conversation in the majority of states, while Hawaii are deserving of their pizza name sake (the Hawaiian) with pineapple being the state’s topping of choice.

Breaking down the same mentions by gender reveals that beef toppings are preferred by men, while women post more about chicken on their pizza bases.

Socially intelligent brands can start to use research of this sort to localize promotional activities to match the real-time preferences of their audience.

But just how granular can brands get?

Exploiting the intent to order a pizza

Geotagged Tweets allow marketers to accurately locate an author’s location. But why do they need it? And what could they do with such information?

To explore this scenario, we’ve taken the same intent to purchase Domino’s pizza data, but sliced it down to look at a Friday evening in May.

We’ve then zoomed in to the New York city region and overlaid the mentions with the locations of physical Domino’s stores.

A smart Domino’s marketer could spend an evening responding to these geotagged Tweets with promotional details to those who seem unsure whether or not they’ll purchase, or with website details to those showing intent.

But crucially, these responses can be tailored to the location.

Information about local promotions, delivery speed to the pizza-lover’s location and local store contact details can all be shared to help entice and push them closer to purchase.

Almost all brands neglect conversation like this, and very few even realize quite how granular they can get with social.

However, with customers increasingly communicating on social during their purchase cycle, it’s crucial brands pay attention.

If they don’t, they’ll see competitors jumping on these Tweets with offers for rival products. Nothing is stopping Papa John’s or Pizza Hut jumping on the Domino’s intent to purchase mentions and stealing those orders for themselves.

With ever connected social customers, the brand who rules online will take a considerable slice of the pizza-pie.

Note: All of the data presented in this article was collected by Brandwatch Analytics – a world-leading social listening tool. Try it for yourself by clicking the link below.