Social data on popular products: what Russian consumers talk about over summer
Before the summer draws to a close, we’d like to present Topface Media’s findings on comments from Russian consumers on summer products in 2018. Last summer, we broke down the conversation, looked at the most discussed brands, their audiences, and their opinions on what’s hot during the hotter months of the year.
We analyzed 4 product categories:
- all types of sunscreen products, including sun creams, aftersun lotions and tan optimizers;
- deodorants and antiperspirants;
- mosquito repellents and mosquito bite treatments;
- weight loss and appetite suppressants, anti-cellulite creams.
The choice of these particular categories wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. Some of these products are in demand throughout the year, yet they seem like the usual suspects when it comes to the summer season.
The data from Yandex.Wordstat (a Russian service similar to Google Trends) confirms this hypothesis. May brought a predictable growth of search queries with the words ‘deodorant’ and ‘antiperspirant’, while in June, one of the most popular questions put to the search engine was ‘how to lose weight’.
When monitoring these mentions, we applied a WOM (Word of Mouth) filter provided by YouScan brand monitoring software. This helped us to identify user generated content (UCG) on social media among promotional posts and announcements.
Dynamics
First place: deodorants.
Over 20 000 mentions in this category were posted between June and September 2018 alone. On certain days, the number of mentions hit the 500 mark.
Second place: sunscreen products (around 6550 mentions).
Third and fourth place: weight loss and anti-mosquito products (2200 and 1000 mentions, respectively).
This break-down of conversations is consistent across all summer months, with occasional spikes of activity. Most likely, they correspond with new discussion threads which generated a bunch of comments in the days after they were published.
Audience
Most of the authors are females between 25 and 34 years old, a group which typically makes up the most active commentators and topic starters on forums, blogs, review sites and social media when it comes to discussing and reviewing products.
Quite predictably, weight loss products have a predominantly female audience (88%), while men were mainly found to be talking about deodorants and mosquito killers (almost 20% in each of those categories). As for age, most mentions were left by people between 25 and 35.
Sources
The majority of mentions can be found on social media: Vkontakte (45% of all conversation), Facebook and Instagram, as well as on popular review sites — otzovik.com and irecommend.ru.
A sizable number of discussions on deodorants took place on proberry.ru, making it one of the largest sources on the topic. The top 5 sites with mentions of sunscreens and mosquito bite treatments also includes baby.ru forum — popular with mothers discussing kids’ products in Russia.
Conversations about weight loss pills were trending on Odnoklassniki social network, with numerous discussions on how to lose weight and suppress appetite.
Sentiment
On the whole, neutral and positive posts were found to be the most prominent.
Weight loss pills and supplements received more negativity than other products, with around 18% from the overall amount of mentions. It would appear that these products can be characterised as provoking high expectations and, then, bringing frequent disappointment with the results among their users.
Sunscreen is the most ‘positive’ category, with over half of the mentions being positive. Negatives amount to just 8% of the conversation. The mentions of these products often appear in the context of nice events: long-awaited vacations, travel plans, and warm and sunny weather. The choice of antiperspirants and mosquito bite sprays, however, is discussed in a more pragmatic way.
Geography
The top locations by number of mentions are Moscow and Moscow Region, Krasnodar region and Sverdlovsk region.
However, each category has its own rating:
- Deodorant discussions — Moscow, Tatarstan and Krasnodar region.
- Sunscreens — Bashkortostan, Moscow and Chelyabinsk regions.
- Weight loss pills and supplements were trending in Sverdlovsk region, Moscow and Krasnodar region.
- Anti-mosquito products — in Chelyabinsk region, Moscow and Krasnodar region.
Brands
We identified the top mentioned brands in each category. Nivea, Rexona and AXE deodorants are talked about the most.
Brand mentions and review sentiment is practically the same for all three of these manufacturers, and falls mainly into the neutral or positive categories. However, Rexona has slightly more negative mentions.
The top mentioned sunscreen brands are La Roche-Posay, Librederm, Mustela and Panthenol (for treating sunburn). The latter holds a leading position in its category, being produced by different manufacturers and in various forms (spray, cream, ointment). Customers appear to mention the active ingredient in these products, and rarely talk about a specific manufacturer.
Librederm takes the top spot for positive comments shared, although the amount of negatives here is slightly higher than for other brands. Librederm is followed by Panthenol and La Roche-Posay. Mustela has a lot of neutral brand mentions.
Reduslim, Turboslim and prescription drug Reduksin dominate the conversation on weight loss products along with Horse Force scrub — a cosmetic product.
This category doesn’t traditionally boast an impressive number of positives, but, even with that in mind, Reduslim demonstrates a significant increase in negative chatter compared to its competitors. People are mainly mentioning its poor quality and it being not worth the money.
Anti-mosquito products with the biggest number of mentions include Fenistil, Mosquitall and Gardex. Fenistil is the stand-out leader by share of conversation and sentiment.
Mosquitall and Gardex offer both repellents and mosquito bite treatments, while Fenistil is only used as a remedy for bites. It appears that customers have a more positive experience with these types of products. If we look at the negative sentiment, Mosquitall has a slightly bigger number of negative mentions out of the three, despite the overall positive picture.
Conclusions
Deodorants and antiperspirants
These products are equally popular with both men and women. So much so, in fact, that male authors (who are usually less likely to discuss personal issues online) make up 25% of the audience.
The prevailing sentiment for this category is neutral, whereas the number of positive mentions is double that of the negatives.
Negative mentions mainly focus on the fact that results do not match customers’ expectations — strong and disgusting smells, stickiness, allergic reactions. There is a large customer group consisting of pregnant women and women who are planning a pregnancy, as well as those who feel strongly about natural cosmetics. They post widely on chemical ingredients in antiperspirants.
The positive conversation focuses on nice discreet odors, the absence of marks on clothes and stickiness, fast absorption, and long-lasting effects. As mentioned earlier, as much as 25% of male audience show interest in these products.
Sunscreens
SPF makeup is the most ‘loved’ category of all. There are 4 times as many positive mentions on it as there are negatives. Cream is the most popular texture for these products. Hyped fluids and oils lag far behind.
Sunscreens come in second. The spike in this conversation occurred at the end of June, which corresponds with the highest temperatures and the highest number of sunny days in Russia.
Similar to deodorants, the majority of mentions come from social media, namely Vkontakte. This shows us that Vkontakte not only has the widest reach, but also an audience who is willing to participate in discussions and share their experiences.
One might expect the main target audience to be female and, indeed, 85% of comments were made by women. Nevertheless, 15% of mentions were from male authors.
60% of the sunscreen reviews are positive, which is extremely rare. Negative reviews only amount to 15%, but they still were the main source of negative sentiment in this category. Customers tend to write positively about sunscreens’ high effectiveness, high SPF factor (30+), additional UVA protection, good absorption qualities, and nice smells. Negative posts are mainly about the lack of protection qualities, bad absorption, oily textures, undesirable ingredients and allergic reactions.
Weight loss and appetite suppressants, anti-cellulite creams
Contrary to expectations, weight loss discussions on social media turned out to be seasonal in the extreme. People talked about anti-cellulite creams and lotions, pills and supplements only in June and the beginning of July, with the conversation drying out by the end of July. Seems like everyone was trying to get fit in the beginning of summer, before the holidays, but then completely lost interest in these kinds of products.
As for sources, the situation is almost the same as with other categories. Vkontakte dominates as the top social channel for conversation around these products, with the second social media platform size-wise being Odnoklassniki.
Despite the audience being predominantly female (95%), males also comment on the topic (4.5% from the total number of mentions in weight loss category).
Most of the positive mentions were about high effectiveness, nice smells, good absorption, and low prices. Negative mentions were characterized by complaints about ineffectiveness, skin rashes, pungent smells, and sticky textures.
Mosquito repellents and mosquito bite treatments
Last but not least, we have mosquito repellents and mosquito bite treatments. They don’t have a big chunk of the conversation, but are mostly positive. Negative sentiment, however, is also quite pronounced, amounting to 9%.
High effectiveness and discreet smells were among the most mentioned advantages. The best format for the repellents according to social media users is spray. The main drawbacks? Ineffectiveness, pungent or acrid smells, and sticky textures.
Female authors left more mentions on mosquito protection (73%) than males (27%). Still, the male audience for these products outstrips all other categories.
We have more data
Look out for our report for the summer 2019 or drop us a line at hello@topfacemedia.com if you would like to dive deeper into conversations on particular topics or find out more about your audience in English-speaking countries.
