Listen to Your Customers: Insights into Brand Image Using Online Consumer-Generated Product Reviews

Abstract

ABSTRACTOnline consumer-generated product reviews are a growing phenomenon and have led to the posting of colossal amounts of data by consumers on the Web. These data include consumers' thoughts, opinions, and feelings about brands and offer firms the opportunity to "listen in" on consumers to get a better understanding of the topics discussed about their brands. Using the human associative memory model as the theoretical framework, the authors introduce an approach to convert online product reviews into meaningful information about brand images using a novel combination of text mining and network analysis methodologies. Following a network-based understanding of brand image, the authors use online product reviews to extract consumers' brand associations and their interconnections as well as to depict and characterize the network of brand associations. In an empirical study, the authors test the approach and illustrate its managerial usefulness. The suggested approach allows managers to effectively monitor and detect strengths and weaknesses of brand image. Moreover, the proposed approach is one of the first attempts to measure brand image using consumer-generated content by applying text mining and network analysis.KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Brand imageconsumer-generated contentnetwork analysisonline product reviewstext mining Notes1. The list of stop words is available from the authors on request.2. The website uses a thumbs up/down icon that we used to identify promoters and detractors.3. See, for example, http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/nutrition_choices.html (accessed on December 2, 2014).Additional informationNotes on contributorsSonja GenslerSONJA GENSLER is researcher and lecturer of marketing at the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Münster, Germany. Her research interests center on digital marketing, multichannel management, and marketing performance measurement. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Marketing Letters, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Interactive Marketing, and European Journal of Operational Research, among others.Franziska VölcknerFRANZISKA VÖLCKNER is professor of marketing at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research interests center on building and managing market-based assets, marketing communication, and new/social media, with a focus on the general question of how companies can build and maintain strong brands. Her work has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Service Research, among others.Marc EggerMARC EGGER studied information systems at the University of Cologne before working as chief technology officer at the MIT spin-off GalaxyAdvisors in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He cofounded Insius, a company specializing in text analytics software. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Information Systems and Information Management at the University of Cologne.Kai FischbachKAI FISCHBACH is professor of information systems and social networks at the University of Bamberg, Germany. His research focuses on integrated information systems, social and economic networks, and the design of efficient information exchanges. His work has been published in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Business and Information Systems Engineering, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Computer Networks, Journal of Business Economics, Information Systems and e-Business Management, Electronic Markets, and Communications of the ACM, among others.Detlef SchoderDETLEF SCHODER is professor of information systems and information management and serves as director of the Institute for Broadcasting Economics at the University of Cologne, Germany. His research interests focus on the economics and management of telecommunications in organizations, especially electronic commerce/electronic business, mass customization, and social media. His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Electronic Markets, among others.