Did 2014 Data Breaches Impact Shoppers' Credit Card Sentiment? What Social Media Can't Tell You

By Laura Albert, data analyst, CivicScience

Over the past year, consumers saw a number of data breaches at major retailers – Target announced a credit card breach during the 2013 holiday season, Home Depot experienced a similar data breach in September 2014, Staples saw a payment card data breach in October 2014, and bebe was the most recent retailer who experienced a security breach in November 2014.  So do these events serve as a catalyst for changed shopping behavior?

Here’s where data can play a key informative role. Having research data that measures consumer sentiment is very important for businesses and retailers, especially when a crisis hits unexpectedly. Because sentiment often precedes behavioral change, it’s an important leading indicator to track. And retailers should not limit their attention to short-term, reactive data such as what can be generated by social media response, but on how sentiment evolves over time.

At CivicScience, where we maintain a platform for collecting and mining real-time consumer research data, we evaluated whether these recent retail data breaches affected consumers’ 2014 holiday shopping with credit or debit cards. Data was collected in two separate polls in two time periods: one shortly after the September 2014 Home Depot breach and the next in mid-December 2014 as the holiday shopping season was winding down.

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