• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 20, 2009

In the increasingly influential blogosphere, wholesale and club stores receive the most favorable coverage among retailers, while traditional department stores and mass merchandisers trail far behind, according to a new study from media analysis company Carma International,

Praised for its low prices and quality product offerings, wholesale giant Costco receives the best coverage from bloggers -- while mass merchandisers like Walmart and Sears, along with traditional department store Macy's, emerged as the retail industry's laggards for the medium.

Walmart was the subject of the largest number of negative blog posts across the industry, and many of these posts were highly critical of the retailer, calling Walmart "evil" or other similar invectives.

"We thought Walmart's financial coverage in the mainstream media would foster positive attention overall from the blogosphere, but that wasn't the case," said study author and Carma vice president Christopher Scully. "We were surprised."

Carma's analysis, meanwhile, showed that only Kmart witnessed a larger share of intensely negative coverage than Walmart among retailers that appeared frequently in blog coverage, with 12% of blog posts on Walmart depicting the retailer with intense negativity.

Only the wholesale and club store sector received favorable blog coverage overall, with few aspects about wholesalers coming under criticism. Nearly 60% of all blog posts on wholesale and club stores were favorable, while only 9% of posts were unfavorable.

In contrast, the blogosphere published unfavorable reporting overall on mass merchandisers and neutral reporting overall on traditional department stores. Both faced significant negative attention from bloggers about their financial struggles in today's economic climate.

With the help of social media monitoring company CyberAlert, Carma searched more than 50 million blogs each day during the first two months of the year for mentions of selected retailers, finding and examining some 3,700 blog posts containing relevant discussions about 17 key retailers.

Carma analyzed a sample of these posts using its research methodology to determine the focus of this blog coverage, the reasons that bloggers praised and criticized the retailers, the frequency with which bloggers discussed the current economic environment, and the favorability with which bloggers depicted the retailers.

Carma included in the study the largest chains from the selected retail sectors as determined by number of stores nationwide, along with several high-end traditional department stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman-Marcus.

Other retailers examined for the study included BJ's Wholesale Club, Bloomingdale's, Bon-Ton, Dillard's, JCPenney, Kohl's, Lord and Taylor, Nordstrom, Sam's Club, and Target.