User-Defined SWOT analysis – A change mining perspective on user-generated content

摘要

User-generated content (UGC) based on customer opinions and experiences has increasingly become a rich resource of business opportunities. This study proposes a change mining framework to address the key shortcomings of the traditional SWOT analysis, including subjectivity in defining factors, lack of empirical validation, inflexible to meet the changing environment, and lack of actionable steps. Product reviews were collected for several brands from Amazon.com. Consumer sentiment was calculated to build an aspect-based opinion database, followed by the application of change mining to the opinion database for different generations of products. Factors were then extracted for the four key categories of SWOT. Our approach not only answers the four key shortcomings of traditional SWOT analysis, but also offers additional opportunities, such as the ability to monitor trends, and flexibility to frame SWOT factors based on desired time periods. Further managerial insights are provided.