Sentiment Analysis of Spanish Words of Arabic Origin Related to Islam: A Social Network Analysis

With the arrival of Muslims in 711 till their expulsion in the 1600s, Arabic language was present in Spain for more than eight centuries. Although social networks have become a valuable resource for mining sentiments, there is no previous research investigating the layman’s sentiment towards Spanish words of Arabic etymology related to Islamic terminology. This study aim at analyzing Spanish words of Arabic origin related to Islam. A random sample of 4586 out of 45860 tweets was used to evaluate general sentiment towards some Spanish words of Arabic origin related to Islam. An expert-predefined Spanish lexicon of around 6800 seed adjectives was used to conduct the analysis. Results indicate a generally positive sentiment towards several Spanish words of Arabic etymology related to Islam. By implementing both a qualitative and quantitative methodology to analyze tweets’ sentiments towards Spanish words of Arabic etymology, this research adds breadth and depth to the debate over Arabic linguistic influence on Spanish vocabulary

UNDERSTANDING THE MASSIVE ONLINE REVIEWS: A NOVEL REPRESENTATIVE SUBSET EXTRACTION METHOD

Online review hasalready been recognized as an important sales assistant for consumers to make their purchase decision. However, with the rapid development of electronic commerce,overwhelming informationoverloads and review manipulation make consumers lost in ocean of reviews and face huge cognitive stress. To address this issue, different types of online review have been developed by online marketplaces. Especially, except traditional types of online reviews (positive, neutral and negative), several new types of online review (review with picture and additional review) do not only contain plain text, but also pictures. Consumers could attach additional reviews to the original reviews to further share their experience sometimes later. Few studies have focused on which types of online reviews are able to influence consumers’ decisions more efficiently. Especially, research on new types of reviews is still unanswered.Using data from Taobao.com, the biggest electronic marketplace in China,this study conducts an empirical investigation to bridge the gap. Weinvestigatethat whether and howtraditional text reviewsand new types of reviews influence consumers’ purchase decision making. The results show that under the context of information overload and review manipulation, traditional reviewsare still influential, but less effective than new types of reviews. Although review with picture and additional review don’t show valence directly, they present more reliable references towards product quality and attract consumers’ attention more efficiently.And it is more interesting that new types of online review provide an effective channel for consumers to alleviate their dissatisfaction to effect potential consumers purchase decision making. The findings of this study can provide useful implications for researchers by highlighting the roles of different types of online review in consumers’ decision making. Also, the empirical investigation in this paper will remind business vendors to focus on online reviews especially new types of online reviews and conduct targeted marketing strategies to increase competitive advantage and improve their sales performance

Using the appraisal theory to analyze online restaurant reviews in the Lisbon region

Mestrado em Ciências EmpresariaisUser-generated content on Web 2.0 touristic websites can be important both for clients and companies of the sector. In the present work it were analyzed 503 online reviews, divided into 2769 sentence segments, from 22 restaurants in the Lisbon region, during the summer period 2012, on Tripadvisor.com. Resorting to an exploratory approach, the objective of this work is to identify the presence of attitude (affect, appreciation and judgement), in accordance with the Appraisal Theory. As well as verify the most mentioned attributes and polarity in each segment. Inter-rater agreement between two other evaluators was also checked, for attitude. The results obtained indicate that the dominant attitude is appreciation with positive polarity. Judgement is usually present when the service and Staff are mentioned, while affect is not often cited in this sample. This indicates that users tend to be more objective and less emotional on their restaurants evaluation. The most mentioned attributes were Quality of Food, Staff and Communication and Price, the majority of these had also positive polarity, which indicates that even in times of economic contention, Quality of Food should be the main focus. The inter-rater agreement was satisfactory. It is also concluded that user-generated content can be useful for managers to better understand the motivations, necessities and expectations of their clients and, in that way, focus their communication campaigns, products and services in order to answer these issues.A informação gerada pelos utilizadores em sítios turísticos Web 2.0 pode ser potencialmente importante tanto para clientes como para as empresas do sector. Neste trabalho foram analisados 503 comentários online, posteriormente divididos em 2769 segmentos de frase, provenientes do site Tripadisor.com referentes a 22 restaurantes da região de Lisboa, durante o período Verão de 2012. O objetivo do trabalho passou por, recorrendo a uma abordagem exploratória, identificar os tipos de atitude presente (afeto, apreciação e julgamento), de acordo com a Teoria da Avaliação. Assim como, verificar os tipos de atributos mais mencionados e a polaridade em cada segmento. Aferiu-se ainda a concordância da avaliação de atitude, recorrendo a dois avaliadores externos. Os resultados obtidos indicam que a atitude dominante é a apreciação com polaridade positiva. Julgamento é mencionado geralmente quando se aborda o serviço e o Staff, enquanto afeto foi pouco citado nesta amostra. Isto indica que os utilizadores tendem a ser mais objetivos e menos emocionais nas suas avaliações a restaurantes. Os atributos mais mencionados são Qualidade da Comida, Staff e Comunicação e Preço, todos com maioritariamente avaliação positiva, o que demonstra que mesmo em tempos de contenção a Qualidade da Comida deve continuar a ser a principal aposta. A concordância obtida foi satisfatória. Conclui-se ainda que a análise detalhada de comentários pode ser útil para que os gestores compreendam melhor as motivações, necessidades e expectativas dos seus clientes e dessa forma orientem as suas campanhas de comunicação e os seus produtos e serviços de forma a dar-lhes resposta

Sentiment analysis in hospitality using text mining: the case of a Portuguese eco-hotel

Jel Classification System: Z32 Tourism and Development; M30 Marketing and AdvertisingThe rapid development of the Internet and mobile devices enabled the emergence of travel and hospitality review sites, leading to a large number of customer opinion posts. While such comments may influence future demand of the targeted hotels, they can also be used by hotel managers for improving customer experience. Nevertheless, this trend poses a problem, considering information is widely scattered, making almost impossible to extract from it useful knowledge. In this study, with the aim of facilitating this process, sentiment classification of an eco-hotel is assessed through a text mining approach using several different sources of customer reviews. Two dictionaries are compiled for building the lexicon used to parse the 401 reviews collected from a Portuguese eco-hotel between January and August of 2015. Then, the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) modeling algorithm is applied to gather relevant topics that characterize a given hospitality issue by a sentiment. Findings of this study state that accuracy is influenced by interaction between LDA generated topic models and the correct construction of both dictionaries. These results also reveal that text mining can generate new insights into variables that have been extensively studied in hospitality industry, including that hotel food generates ordinary positive sentiments for the case studied, while hospitality generates both ordinary and strong positive feelings. Such results are valuable for hospitality management, validating the approach proposed.O rápido desenvolvimento da Internet e dos dispositivos móveis possibilitou o aparecimento de sites de viagens e sites de opinião na indústria hoteleira, levando a um grande número opiniões publicadas por parte do cliente. Embora, esses comentários possam influenciar a procura futura de certos hotéis, estes também podem ser usados pelos gestores dos hotéis para melhorar a experiência do cliente. No entanto, esta tendência representa um problema, uma vez que hoje em dia a informação se apresenta bastante ampla e dispersa, tornando quase impossível analisar todas as opiniões de clientes. Neste estudo, com o objetivo de facilitar este processo, a classificação de sentimentos de um hotel ecológico é avaliada através de uma abordagem de “text mining” usando diversas fontes de comentários de clientes. Dois dicionários foram compilados para a construção do léxico usado para analisar os 401 comentários recolhidos a partir de um Eco hotel português entre janeiro e agosto de 2015. Em seguida, o algoritmo de modelação “latent Dirichlet allocation” (LDA) é aplicado para reunir tópicos relevantes que caracterizam uma determinada questão de hospitalidade por um sentimento. Os resultados apurados neste estudo focam essencialmente que a precisão do mesmo é influenciada pela interação entre o modelo LDA, neste caso entre os tópicos por ele gerados e a correta construção de ambos os dicionários. Estes resultados revelam também que o “text mining” pode gerar novas perspetivas acerca de variáveis que têm sido extensivamente estudadas na indústria hoteleira, incluindo, no caso estudado, que a comida do hotel gera sentimentos positivos comuns, enquanto a hospitalidade gera ambos os sentimentos: positivos comuns e positivos fortes. Tais resultados são valiosos para a gestão hoteleira validando a abordagem proposta

Conceptualising the panic buying phenomenon during COVID-19 as an affective assemblage

Purpose-This study aims to conceptualise the panic buying behaviour of consumers in the UK during the novel COVID-19 crisis, using the assemblage approach as it is non-deterministic and relational and affords new ways of understanding the phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach-The study undertakes a digital ethnography approach and content analysis of Twitter data. A total of 6,803 valid tweets were collected over the perio

Tecnologias Web 2.0 : O caso de Pequenos e Médios Hotéis no distrito de Lisboa

Mestrado em Ciências EmpresariaisA evolução da internet para a sua segunda geração, a Web 2.0, insere no quotidiano social e empresarial novas tendências sociais e tecnologias, com características que, devido aos princípios que têm em comum, as tornam potencialmente favoráveis na integração da gestão de pequenas e médias empresas (PME). Este estudo investiga como é que as tecnologias Web 2.0, mais propriamente as revisões online podem auxiliar as PME nomeadamente os pequenos e médios hotéis (PMH). Para tal, foram recolhidos e analisados 1500 comentários de 50 pequenos e médios hotéis, quanto a diversos parâmetros e procurou-se cruzar essa informação para encontrar padrões que permitissem chegar a conclusões. Os resultados mostram que quarto, staff e localização foram os parâmetros mais frequentes nas revisões online analisadas e, limpeza, simpatia, prestabilidade e posição central os termos mais utilizados para os qualificar existindo uma tendência para avaliar os hotéis de forma positiva, e com notas elevadas. Esta investigação conclui que as revisões online podem ajudar a gestão dos pequenos e médios hotéis estudados, na tomada de decisões para aumentar a satisfação dos seus clientes e para dirigir os recursos existentes de forma eficiente.The Internet's evolution into their second generation, the Web 2.0, brought into the social and business daily routine, new social trends and technologies, with features that, due to the principles they have in common, make them potentially favorable to help the management of small and medium enterprises (SME). This study investigates how Web 2.0 technologies, in particular manner online reviews, can help small and medium enterprises, particularly small and medium sized hotels. To this end, 1500 comments of online reviews from 50 small and medium sized hotels were collected and analyzed, on various parameters, and the information was cross referenced in order to find patterns in the reviews that could lead to conclusions. The results show that the room, staff and location were the parameters most frequently referred in the reviews, being cleanliness, friendliness, helpfulness and central position the terms more used to qualify them. Tendencies to evaluate the hotels in a positive fashion, with the utilization of high ratings were identified. This research concludes that online reviews can help the management of the small and medium hotels that entered this study, in making decisions to increase customer satisfaction and to direct existing resources efficiently