Mining customer requirements from online reviews: A product improvement perspective

Big data commerce has become an e-commerce trend. Learning how to extract valuable and real time insights from big data to drive smarter and more profitable business decisions is a main task of big data commerce. Using online reviews as an example, manufacturers have come to value how to select helpful online reviews and what can be learned from online reviews for new product development. In this research, we first proposed an automatic filtering model to predict the helpfulness of online reviews from the perspective of the product designer. The KANO method, which is based on the classical conjoint analysis model, is then innovatively applied to analyze online reviews to develop appropriate product improvement strategies. Moreover, an empirical case study using the new method is conducted with the data we acquired from JD.com, one of the largest electronic marketplaces in China. The case study indicates the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach. Our research suggests that the combination of big data and classical management models can bring success for big data commerce.