A framework for big data analytics in commercial social networks: A case study on sentiment analysis and fake review detection for marketing decision-making

Abstract

User-generated content about brands is an important source of big data that can be transformed into valuable information. A huge number of items are reviewed and rated by consumers on a daily basis, and managers have a keen interest in real-time monitoring of this information to improve decision-making. The main challenge is to mine reliable textual consumer opinions, and automatically use them to rate the best products or brands. We propose a framework to automatically analyse these reviews, transforming negative and positive user opinions in a quantitative score. Sentiment analysis was employed to analyse online reviews on Amazon. The Fake Review Detection Framework—FRDF— detects and removes fake reviews using Natural Language Processing technology. The FRDF was tested on reviews of products from high-tech industries. Brands were rated according to consumer sentiment. The findings demonstrate that brand managers and consumers would find this tool useful, in combination with the 5-Star score, for more comprehensive decision-making. For instance, the FRDF ranks the best products by price alongside their respective sentiment value and the 5-Star score.