A computer-based approach for analyzing consumer demands in electronic word-of-mouth

Consumer opinions are one of the most valuable assets that enterprises have, and thus questionnaires are often employed to investigate the views of consumers. However, this approach requires a large amount of human labor and time, and, most importantly, it cannot automatically find out consumers’ needs. However, many consumers now share their appraisals of products or services through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Since these usually reflect consumer needs, and thus their demands, collecting and analyzing eWOM data has become a key task for many businesses. Nonetheless, current eWOM-related research focuses on its transmission, influence, issues, and marketing, and there seem to be very few studies that apply eWOM to develop consumer needs analysis systems. In order to effectively collect and analyze eWOM data, this study proposes a computer-based approach for analyzing consumer demands. The approach utilizes sentiment analysis to develop extraction methods for use with eWOM appraisals. It thus uses eWOM appraisals to find out consumer demands. This work integrates eWOM with information technology to develop an approach to computerize consumer needs analysis. It is expected that the results will help enterprises to improve the quality of their products and market competitiveness.