It’s almost the end of the summer, and as school buses gear up for their routes, moms, dads and kids are gearing up for school to start again. And for retailers across the country, that can mean only one thing: back-to-school shopping.

To find out where consumers are doing their shopping–and who they’re talking about–we used our ConsumerBase tool to surface opinions, emotions and behaviors being expressed in the social media universe.  This month’s Brand Passion Index takes a look at some of the biggest retailers for back-to-school shopping: Target, Old Navy, Macy’s, K-Mart, WalMart, Sears and JC Penney.

The insights found by ConsumerBase revealed that despite the low prices associated with Wal-Mart, consumers have relatively negative feelings and low chatter with the brand. Though the positive sentiment for Target isn’t quite as passionate as Old Navy, the discount retail giant has captured far and away the most chatter.

In this graphic, the amount of sentiment and chatter about a brand is indicated by the size of the bubble, while the placement of the bubble shows the intensity of passion.

And while WalMart pulled in $405 billion in the last year, consumers don’t seem too impressed with the quality or service at WalMart.

“This walmart is getting cheap and greedy and I wish they never opened this so called Super Center.”
“Plus I just plain old don’t like WalMart, because it’s gross and dirty and slow and awful and makes me doubt humanity.”
“Personally I don’t like Walmart’s clothes because the quality is terrible.”

Target, on the other hand, had glowing reviews for its low prices and varied selection.