Big data and Sentiment Analysis considering reviews from e-commerce platforms to predict consumer behavior

Treballs Finals del Màster de Recerca en Empresa, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019-2020, Tutor: Javier Manuel Romaní Fernández ; Jaime Gil LafuenteNowadays and since the last two decades, digital data is generated on a massive scale, this phenomenon is known as Big Data (BD). This phenomenon supposes a change in the way of managing and drawing conclusions from data. Moreover, techniques and methods used in artificial intelligence shape new ways of analysis considering BD. Sentiment Analysis (SA) or Opinion Mining (OM) is a topic widely studied for the last few years due to its potential in extracting value from data. However, it is a topic that has been more explored in the fields of engineering or linguistics and not so much in business and marketing fields. For this reason, the aim of this study is to provide a reachable guide that includes the main BD concepts and technologies to those who do not come from a technical field such as Marketing directors. This essay is articulated in two parts. Firstly, it is described the BD ecosystem and the technologies involved. Secondly, it is conducted a systematic literature review in which articles related with the field of SA are analysed. The contribution of this study is a summarization and a brief description of the main technologies behind BD, as well as the techniques and procedures currently involved in SA

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Tasks for Agent-Based Negotiation Teams:Analysis, Review, and Challenges

An agent-based negotiation team is a group of interdependent agents that join together as a single negotiation party due to their shared interests in the negotiation at hand. The reasons to employ an agent-based negotiation team may vary: (i) more computation and parallelization capabilities, (ii) unite agents with different expertise and skills whose joint work makes it possible to tackle complex negotiation domains, (iii) the necessity to represent different stakeholders or different preferences in the same party (e.g., organizations, countries, and married couple). The topic of agent-based negotiation teams has been recently introduced in multi-agent research. Therefore, it is necessary to identify good practices, challenges, and related research that may help in advancing the state-of-the-art in agent-based negotiation teams. For that reason, in this article we review the tasks to be carried out by agent-based negotiation teams. Each task is analyzed and related with current advances in different research areas. The analysis aims to identify special challenges that may arise due to the particularities of agent-based negotiation teams.Comment: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 201

Values of artificial intelligence in marketing

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is causing radical changes in marketing and emerging as a competent assistant supporting all areas of the marketing field. The influences and impacts AI has created in various marketing segments have aroused much interest among marketing professionals and academic scholars. Comprehensive and systematic studies on the values of AI in marketing, however, are still lacking and the existing literature fragmented. This research provides a comprehensive review of the existing literature in the relevant fields as well as a series of systematic interviews using the Value-Focused Thinking approach to understand the values of AI in marketing. This research results in a means-ends network demonstrating the values and the relationships between the articulated values of AI in marketing by the subjects”--Abstract, page iii

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Information technology for competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains: a review

This paper offers a systematic review of the literature on the use of information technology (IT) in logistics and supply chain management to achieve competitive advantage. While IT has revolutionized traditional logistics and supply chains to achieve numerous benefits such as increased efficiency and responsiveness, it is not still clear to what extend IT has contributed to competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains. This paper contributes to this debate by: (i) reporting the literature on the role of IT in achieving competitive advantage within logistics and supply chains based on the linkages between ‘adaptation’, ‘alignment’, and ‘agility’, (triple A’s) (Lee, 2004), and (ii) discussing managerial implications and identifying future research directions

Decision Support System for Production Planning from a Sustainability Perspective

Manufacturing enterprises supply our global demand for products, creating economic value. Moreover, they are also responsible for several environmental and social impacts, e.g., green-house gases, waste, and poor working conditions. These impacts cause climate change, air and sea pollution, and social inequality, which are a few examples of current challenges for global sustainability strategies. However, researchers have widely addressed these impacts and warned politicians and society about the risk of the collapse of ecosystems. Despite these warnings, manufacturing enterprises still have difficulties improving the sustainability of their production processes. Therefore, new technologies are required to support enterprises and help determine their production processes’ sustainability status by considering multiple aspects (economic, environmental, and social). Moreover, advice should be given on how the identified issues can be avoided, reduced, or compensated for future production activities. This research presents a fuzzy decision support system and an experimental study for sustainability-based production planning. For this approach, systematic literature reviews were made, analysing concept methods for sustainability-based production management and planning. The results show, among other things, that current methods for sustainability-production planning are focused on single aspects of sustainability (e.g., energy or waste planning). Therefore, a fuzzy decision support system was developed that simultaneously evaluates social, environmental, and economic aspects. The decision support system's model identifies the most significant opportunities to improve the production program's sustainability and gives recommendations on how to change it. The decision support system was tested and validated in an experimental study in the production planning laboratory at Emden University of Applied Sciences. The study results discuss problems, needs, and challenges affecting sustainability-based production planning. Moreover, opportunities for future research were identified based on the limitations of the experimental study.As empresas transformadoras satisfazem a procura global de produtos, criando valor económico. No entanto, também são responsáveis por vários impactos ambientais e sociais, por exemplo, gases de efeito estufa, resíduos e más condições de trabalho. Estes impactos originam alterações climáticas, poluição do ar e do mar e desigualdade social, que constituem alguns exemplos dos desafios que se colocam atualmente às estratégias globais de sustentabilidade. De notar que os investigadores têm abordado amplamente estes impactos e alertado os políticos e a sociedade sobre o risco do colapso dos ecossistemas. Apesar destes alertas, as empresas transformadoras ainda têm dificuldades em melhorar a sustentabilidade dos seus processos produtivos. Como tal, são necessárias novas tecnologias para apoiar as empresas, ajudando a caracterizar o estado de sustentabilidade dos seus processos de produção, considerando múltiplos fatores (económicos, ambientais e sociais). Além disso, devem ser dados conselhos sobre o modo como os problemas identificados podem ser evitados, reduzidos ou compensados em atividades de produção futuras. A investigação realizada contribuiu para o desenvolvimento de um sistema de apoio à decisão difuso, aplicado a um estudo de caso de planeamento da produção baseado na sustentabilidade. Para o efeito, foram conduzidas revisões sistemáticas da literatura, analisando os conceitos associados aos métodos para gestão e planeamento da produção baseado na sustentabilidade. Os resultados revelam, entre outras conclusões, que os métodos atuais para o planeamento da produção sustentável estão focados em fatores isolados de sustentabilidade (e.g., planeamento energético ou de resíduos). Perante este contexto, foi desenvolvido um sistema de apoio à decisão difuso, que avalia simultaneamente fatores sociais, ambientais e económicos. O modelo do sistema de apoio à decisão identifica as oportunidades mais significativas para melhorar a sustentabilidade do programa de produção e fornece recomendações sobre o modo como este pode ser alterado. O sistema de apoio à decisão foi testado e validado num estudo de caso simulado no laboratório de planeamento da produção na Universidade de Ciências Aplicadas de Emden. Os resultados do estudo de caso permitiram analisar os problemas, necessidades e desafios que afetam o planeamento da produção baseado na sustentabilidade. Complementarmente, foram identificadas oportunidades de investigação futuras, considerando as limitações do estudo de caso realizado