The most active supermarkets: a Ukrainian media field research

The research covers the period from January 1 to July 17, 2022. It includes ATB, Silpo, NOVUS, Varus, METRO, Auchan, Fozzy, Fora, and EKO-market stores.

Who is the most talked-about?

The leader in the number of mentions for the entire period is the ATB supermarket chain. The store takes up the third of the media field in the number of publications and 41% in the potential reach.

The Silpo chain comes in second. It is part of the Fozzy Group, but, compared to other stores of the Silpo corporation, it is mentioned 3 times more often. The coverage of Silpo publications is 13% of the entire field (twice that of the Fozzy network, which belongs to the same corporation).

The Silpo supermarket chain appears appealing to consumers and is committed to detailed interaction with them. We can assume that Silpo collects user data and studies the preferences of its customers to gain an understanding of their behavior at each point of contact. Media analytics also allows you to discover demographic data, interests, and professions of digital consumers in a matter of minutes. Gaining insights from this data lets you understand consumers and gain market share with relevant campaigns. Especially considering that communication campaigns cannot reach maximum effectiveness without researching global and local trends. A combination of market research and media analytics is valuable for high quality and timely campaign preparation. An effective strategy in this case would be to use Industry Watcher and LOOQME Hub to analyze the current trends and create the experience that consumers want.

Fozzy network is likely paying special attention to consumer engagement: the potential reach of Fozzy's mentions exceeds that of its three closest competitors who, in the meanwhile, have more publications. This indicates effective work on relevant quality content rather than quantitative indicators.

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• The largest number of mentions for supermarkets was at the end of February and the beginning of March. The peak number of posts falls on March 4, and the potential reach - on February 24.

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• Since the outbreak of the full-scale war, company mentions have increased by an average of 20.9% and audience reach has almost doubled.

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• Fora has shown the largest increase (+363% in the number of mentions and +1.469% in reach, compared to the period before February 24).

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• The media activity of Novus, Metro, and Auchan stores has decreased. Auchan has additionally lost half of its median coverage.

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• ATB was the leader in mentions for most of the period, with exceptions in mid-April and early June while it still maintained first place on a monthly basis.

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• We see a spike in the number of posts mentioning METRO during June 6-12. However, they were episodic in nature when news spread about the number of people lining up for humanitarian aid in the former METRO shopping center (Mariupol) reaching from 1.5 to 2 thousand.

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• The activity (total number of publications) of all stores, except for METRO and Auchan, was the highest in March 2022. Auchan is the only one among the surveyed whose number of mentions decreased in March.

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• When we look at the share in the media field, we can see that ATB takes a leading position throughout the entire period. However, its closest competitor Silpo is actively increasing communication and catching up in the media field.

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• The distribution of the media field in June is very similar to that of January.

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Media favorability

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Varus had the highest quality indicators of publications in May and April. The For you with an open heart project in partnership with Visa and the Ministry of Social Policy was the main information drive that gave such a result.Overall MFI, which represents the media's commitment to the company, increased by 140% compared to the period before February 24. Fora, Varus, and Fozzy networks have demonstrated the highest MFI indicators.The media's commitment to METRO has significantly decreased (as the russian division of the German METRO AG continues its operations in russia. Each division is a separate player in the local market with a separate operating model).

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Peaks of activity and their information drives

The largest number of publications per day was March 4, 2022. This day’s word cloud shows that the words "Coca-Cola", "company", "chain", "shop", "Ukraine", and "product" appeared in the texts most often. In the trends, we see the words "refuse", "remove", "continue", "sponsorship", "drink", "inhumanity", "acquisition". Stores refusing to work with Coca-Cola because of its decision to continue working in russia became the main newsbreak of the day.

Another peak of 1,649 publications was on February 24. The context of the texts was made up of words related to the stores’ operations mode: "shop", "work", "chain", "regime", and “company". The words "maximum", "enough", "try", "provide", "transport", "work", "supply" were in the trends.

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Key info field words

The most frequently used words in the media field were "shop", "Ukraine", "chain", "company", "work", "product", "supermarket", "price", "Ukrainian", "goods", "ATB"Words that showed the biggest increase in use were “withdraw”, “war”, “cash”, “local”, “salt”, “currency”Words that were no longer actively used after February 24 "plastic", "Cyprus", "buffet"

When we look at the immediate environment of the words "store" and "supermarket", we can see "chain", "ATB", "Silpo", "work", "food", and "shelf" used closest to them.Regarding the dynamics of changes, the words "sugar", "price tag", "to sell", "to work" became more common next to the words "store" and "supermarket" during the period of the full-scale invasion.Before February 24, the words "fillet", "herring", "buckwheat", "profit", "general director", "place", "pepper", "fitness", "club", and "fruit" came up next to "store" or "supermarket" most often.

A unique environment for each network:

• METRO: "good", "cash & carry", "kray", "Mariupol", "vegetable", "Auchan", "German", "offer"
• Novus: "withdrawal", "Oleksii", "amstore", "Raimondas", "operate", "milk", "access", "fillet", "herring", "buckwheat"
• Varus: “Oleh”, “car”, “city”, “kilogram”, “commerce”, “excellent”, “products”, “shoot”, “Olga”
• ATB: "Boris", "card", "Raif", "communication", "good", "emerge", "enter", "provide"
• Auchan: “real”, “Chornovol”, “local”, “Hungary”, “carry”, “Khotynskyi”, “grind”, “Leroy”, “scatter”, “Poland”
• Silpo: “le”, “app”, “plan”, “most important”, “arrange”, “increase”, “gradually”, “assistant”, “decrease”, “mall”

The article first came out on Marketer.ua