Automated Marketing Research Using Online Customer Reviews
01 Oct 2011-Journal of Marketing Research (American Marketing Association)-Vol. 48, Iss: 5, pp 881-894
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a method to support the analysis and visualization of market structure by automatically eliciting product attributes and brand's relative positions from online customer reviews, using the "voice of the consumer" as reflected in customer reviews.
Abstract: Market structure analysis is a basic pillar of marketing research. Classic challenges in marketing such as pricing, campaign management, brand positioning, and new product development are rooted in an analysis of product substitutes and complements inferred from market structure. In this article, the authors present a method to support the analysis and visualization of market structure by automatically eliciting product attributes and brand's relative positions from online customer reviews. First, the method uncovers attributes and attribute dimensions using the “voice of the consumer,” as reflected in customer reviews, rather than that of manufacturers. Second, the approach runs automatically. Third, the process supports rather than supplants managerial judgment by reinforcing or augmenting attributes and dimensions found through traditional surveys and focus groups. The authors test the approach on six years of customer reviews for digital cameras during a period of rapid market evolution. They...
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References
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22 Aug 2004TL;DR: This research aims to mine and to summarize all the customer reviews of a product, and proposes several novel techniques to perform these tasks.
Abstract: Merchants selling products on the Web often ask their customers to review the products that they have purchased and the associated services. As e-commerce is becoming more and more popular, the number of customer reviews that a product receives grows rapidly. For a popular product, the number of reviews can be in hundreds or even thousands. This makes it difficult for a potential customer to read them to make an informed decision on whether to purchase the product. It also makes it difficult for the manufacturer of the product to keep track and to manage customer opinions. For the manufacturer, there are additional difficulties because many merchant sites may sell the same product and the manufacturer normally produces many kinds of products. In this research, we aim to mine and to summarize all the customer reviews of a product. This summarization task is different from traditional text summarization because we only mine the features of the product on which the customers have expressed their opinions and whether the opinions are positive or negative. We do not summarize the reviews by selecting a subset or rewrite some of the original sentences from the reviews to capture the main points as in the classic text summarization. Our task is performed in three steps: (1) mining product features that have been commented on by customers; (2) identifying opinion sentences in each review and deciding whether each opinion sentence is positive or negative; (3) summarizing the results. This paper proposes several novel techniques to perform these tasks. Our experimental results using reviews of a number of products sold online demonstrate the effectiveness of the techniques.
7,330 citations
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23 Aug 1992TL;DR: A set of lexico-syntactic patterns that are easily recognizable, that occur frequently and across text genre boundaries, and that indisputably indicate the lexical relation of interest are identified.
Abstract: We describe a method for the automatic acquisition of the hyponymy lexical relation from unrestricted text. Two goals motivate the approach: (i) avoidance of the need for pre-encoded knowledge and (ii) applicability across a wide range of text. We identify a set of lexico-syntactic patterns that are easily recognizable, that occur frequently and across text genre boundaries, and that indisputably indicate the lexical relation of interest. We describe a method for discovering these patterns and suggest that other lexical relations will also be acquirable in this way. A subset of the acquisition algorithm is implemented and the results are used to augment and critique the structure of a large hand-built thesaurus. Extensions and applications to areas such as information retrieval are suggested.
3,550 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss various issues involved in implementing conjoint analysis and describe some new technical developments and application areas for the methodology, which has been applied to a wide variety of problems in consumer research.
Abstract: Since 1971 conjoint analysis has been applied to a wide variety of problems in consumer research. This paper discusses various issues involved in implementing conjoint analysis and describes some new technical developments and application areas for the methodology.
3,193 citations
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TL;DR: Online feedback mechanisms harness the bidirectional communication capabilities of the Internet to engineer large-scale, word-of-mouth networks as discussed by the authors, which has potentially important implications for a wide range of management activities such as brand building, customer acquisition and retention, product development and quality assurance.
Abstract: Online feedback mechanisms harness the bidirectional communication capabilities of the Internet to engineer large-scale, word-of-mouth networks. Best known so far as a technology for building trust and fostering cooperation in online marketplaces, such as eBay, these mechanisms are poised to have a much wider impact on organizations. Their growing popularity has potentially important implications for a wide range of management activities such as brand building, customer acquisition and retention, product development, and quality assurance. This paper surveys our progress in understanding the new possibilities and challenges that these mechanisms represent. It discusses some important dimensions in which Internet-based feedback mechanisms differ from traditional word-of-mouth networks and surveys the most important issues related to their design, evaluation, and use. It provides an overview of relevant work in game theory and economics on the topic of reputation. It discusses how this body of work is being extended and combined with insights from computer science, management science, sociology, and psychology to take into consideration the special properties of online environments. Finally, it identifies opportunities that this new area presents for operations research/management science (OR/MS) research.
2,519 citations
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TL;DR: A self-selection bias in satisfaction measures used commonly for QFD and for corporate incentive programs is demonstrated, demonstrating how a product-development team used the voice of the customer to create a successful new product.
Abstract: In recent years, many U.S. and Japanese firms have adopted Quality Function Deployment QFD. QFD is a total-quality-management process in which the "voice of the customer" is deployed throughout the R&D, engineering, and manufacturing stages of product development. For example, in the first "house" of QFD, customer needs are linked to design attributes thus encouraging the joint consideration of marketing issues and engineering issues. This paper focuses on the "Voice-of-the-Customer" component of QFD, that is, the tasks of identifying customer needs, structuring customer needs, and providing priorities for customer needs.
In the identification stage, we address the questions of 1 how many customers need be interviewed, 2 how many analysts need to read the transcripts, 3 how many customer needs do we miss, and 4 are focus groups or one-on-one interviews superior? In the structuring stage the customer needs are arrayed into a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and tertiary needs. We compare group consensus affinity charts, a technique which accounts for most industry applications, with a technique based on customer-sort data. In the stage which provides priorities we present new data in which product concepts were created by product-development experts such that each concept stressed the fulfillment of one primary customer need. Customer interest in and preference for these concepts are compared to measured and estimated importances. We also address the question of whether frequency of mention can be used as a surrogate for importance. Finally, we examine the stated goal of QFD, customer satisfaction. Our data demonstrate a self-selection bias in satisfaction measures that are used commonly for QFD and for corporate incentive programs.
We close with a brief application to illustrate how a product-development team used the voice of the customer to create a successful new product.
1,867 citations