for Memorial Day

Consumers are feeling pretty perky about things going into Memorial Day, according to new new IBM data that could give retailers and the hospitality industry reason to smile over the long weekend.

The state's average gasoline price, though down 5.5 cents from a week earlier, is still higher than during Memorial Day weekend 2008. Analysts say this summer's outlook is difficult to predict.

For its latest social-media sentiment analysis project, IBM sifted through publicly available data from Twitter, Facebook and blogs to glean the “Desire Ratio” – or the proportion of positive comments compared to negative comments about such topics as shopping. It’s up five-fold this year over last year’s Memorial Day figures.