On 17 May, Morrisons announced that it had agreed a deal with Ocado that would enable it to offer an online grocery shopping service. Currently, Morrisons is the biggest supermarket chain in the UK that does not offer an online service.
Using YouGov’s social media analysis tool, SoMA, we can measure the impact of this announcement on Twitter. We can see that on the day prior to the announcement, just 1.1% of the UK Twitter population heard about Morrisons, which rose significantly to 24.1% of the Twitter population on the day of the announcement.
SoMA is also able to tell us what is heard, as well as by whom it was heard. For example, we know that the most popular words mentioned alongside Morrisons on 17 May were ‘Ocado’, ‘deal’ and ‘online’. We also know that 57% of those who heard about Morrisons were male, while 23% earn £50k plus.
It will be interesting to continue to monitor the conversations surrounding this deal, particularly because of the potential impact it could have on Ocado’s long-standing relationship with rival supermarket chain Waitrose.
