Application of text mining techniques to the analysis of discourse in eWOM communications from a gender perspective

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change Vol. 129; pp. 131 - 142
• Main Authors: Teso, E., Olmedilla, M., Martínez-Torres, M.R., Toral, S.L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01.04.2018; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Consumers; Content analysis; Data mining; Discourse analysis; Electronic word-of-mouth; Equality; eWOM; Feature extraction; Gender aspects; Gender differences; Internet; Methodological approaches; On-line systems; Recommender systems; Sentiment analysis; Statistical analysis; User generated content; Word of mouth advertising; Sentiment analysis; Discourse analysis; User-generated content; Electronic word-of-mouth; eWOM; Content analysis
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2017.12.018

The emergence of online user-generated content has raised numerous questions about discourse gender differences as compared to face-to-face interactions. The intended gender-free equality of Internet has been challenged by numerous studies, and significant differences have been found in online communications. This paper proposes the application of text mining techniques to online gender discourse through the analysis of shared reviews in electronic word-of-mouth communities (eWOM), which is a form of user-generated content. More specifically, linguistic issues, sentiment analysis and content analysis were applied to online reviews from a gender perspective. The methodological approach includes gathering online reviews, pre-processing collected reviews and a statistical analysis of documents features to extract the differences between male and female discourses in a specific product category. Findings reveal not only the discourse differences between women and men but also their different preferences and the feasibility of predicting gender using a set of frequent key terms. These findings are interesting both for retailers so they can adapt their offer to the gender of customers, and for online recommender systems, as the proposed methodology can be used to predict the gender of users in those cases where the gender is not explicitly stated. •Differences in the discourse of men and women when reviewing and commenting books•Gender categorization of reviews using a set of frequent key terms•Online discourse maintains some of the differences in face-to-face interactions.•Identification of the main topics of interest for males and females