Competitive analysis of online reviews using exploratory text mining

Purpose – This paper explores the usefulness of analyzing text-based online reviews using text mining tools and visual analytics for SWOT Analysis, as applied to the hotel industry. These results can be used to develop competitive actions. Design – The text mining/visualization tool, ReviewMap, was used to transform an archive of reviews spanning multiple suppliers into a hierarchy of data of increasing dimensionality. Visual summaries at each level were integrated to propagate selections at one level throughout the rest of the hierarchy. These visual summaries identify features required for competition at a given level and features that currently discriminate amongst competitors. Methodology – The approach was exploratory, the objective of which was to determine if useable competitive intelligence could be found in a typical collection of online reviews for a set of competing hotels. A publically available collection of reviews was subjected to a set of text mining procedures and visual analyses in order to summarize the features and opinions expressed. Originality – Prior analyses of online reviews relied solely upon numeric “star” ratings. This study utilized text mining to uncover information within the written comments and applied the information in a SWOT Analysis of three competing hotels. Findings – In the set of reviews used in this paper, a common measure of analytical power almost doubled when text mining summaries of the written comments were used in combination with numeric ratings. Visual analytics revealed the dominant features for each hotel, the features required of all hotels competing at a given level, and the features that define specific positions within the competitive landscape. This analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats revealed several promising competitive actions for the hotels in the study

Can customer sentiment impact firm value? An integrated text mining approach

Developing measures to capture customer sentiment and securing a positive customer experience is a strategic necessity to improve firm profitability and shareholder value. The paper considers the relationship between customer satisfaction, earnings, and firm value as these drives change in stock prices, customer, and investor sentiment. The present study investigates the impact of customer sentiment polarity on stock prices based on Indian automobile sector databased such as the Indian Nifty Auto SNE (Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, and Eicher). A top-down approach is adopted to construct a financial proxy-based sentiment index completed with sentiment extracted from automobile news and customer reviews. The paper uses a text mining approach to holistically measure customer sentiment’s impact on investor sentiment and stock prices. The study was initially performed at the overall individual stock from the Nifty Auto NSE but focused on the top three passenger vehicle manufacturing companies i.e., Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, and Eicher. It was found that the sentiment index was augmented with news and customer reviews allows predicting more accurately NIFTY AUTO stock price movements. This implies that customer sentiment is a major driver of investor sentiment which in turn impacts the stock market and the firm value. Thus, the present study is an integrated approach to holistically measure customer sentiment’s impact on investor sentiment and stock prices.WOS:00071138140002

Retrieving Product Features and Opinions from Customer Reviews

A new methodology based on language models retrieves product features and opinions from a collection of free-text customer reviews about a product or service. The proposal relies on a language-modeling framework that can be applied to reviews in any domain and language provided with a minimal knowledge source of sentiments or opinions