Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning: Value Creation for Business

Leaders and Practitioners. Jared Dean.

2014 SAS Institute Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

C HA P T E R 14
Case Study of
Online Brand
Management

I
n this modern information age, business success is closely tied to your
success on the Internet. This is especially true of manufacturers. On-
line brand management is a challenging, fastpaced environment
where ideas or perceptions that once took weeks can evolve in hours.
The popular microblogging site Twitter reported in the fall of 2012
that it was now seeing 500 million tweets per day on the site. A quick
search for this large company revealed thousands of tweets from their
customers. With each fivesecond refresh, more than 20 new tweets
would arrive almost around the clock. It is impossible for any human or
any department of humans to keep up with all the customer comments
about a company from just this one microblogging service. Now add up-
dates from other popular social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and
others, and staying on top of consumers thoughts on your product can
appear to be an impossible task. The amount of information that must
be processed to keep an accurate view of the brands value and then be

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prepared to promote, defend, or anticipate changes in the brand can

seem to be a daunting task.
A number of analytical techniques can be used to help tame this
task. Here we will talk about Twitter, but these six techniques could be
used for almost any humangenerated feed of data.

1. Identify the language in which the user is commenting. Lan-

guage detection is an important first step because it can help
determine the size and scope of the issue or praise. By and
large, Twitter users only use the site in one language with a few
using two (almost always their mother tongue plus English).
Identifying the language also helps to identify a location if the
GPS locations are not available. (In my experience, this is of
minor benefit since most tweets are made from smartphones,
which include the location in their metadata.)
2. Look for sentiment. Sentiment analysis is a fantastic tool in
managing a brand because it helps you focus in on those cus-
tomers who are unhappy, the aspects of the product that cause
the most problems, or those users who can be of help as ad-
vocates for your brand. The true power of sentiment analysis
is that it not only informs you how customers feel about your
product but it tells you how strongly they feel it. It also sheds
light on if they feel this particular way about the entire product
or just some aspects of the product. For example, consider an
LCD TV display. This is a complex product with many individu-
al features to like or dislike in addition to an overall sentiment.
By first identifying the language, we can see that there are a
higherthannormal set of negative posts from Brazil, which
might lead to an investigation of the translation quality of the
users manual or it might point out a product flaw that when
the TV is left on for a large number of hours (like during the
World Cup), the color saturation changes and it is harder to
discern details in the content.
3. Categorize the content. There is some debate that I think boils
down to personal preference about doing sentiment analysis
before content categorization or vice versa. My personal pref-
erence for this order is that it allows me to use sentiment as a
 CASE STUDY OF ONLINE BRAND MANAGEMENT 223

filter for the most emergent issues, upset customers, and then
categorize those feedback items.
4. Apply business rules to the situation. Once we have identified
the sentiment of particular users and the categories that trouble
or please them, we must now use the established business pro-
cess for resolving their concern or leveraging the positive feed-
back in future activities. If current business processes do not
include details on how to react in these types of situations, then
those business processes will need to be established, but that is a
separate discussion that will not be dealt with in this book.
An example of a standard business process for positive feed-
back is to retweet or like the comment so that users following
you will see the positive comment and hopefully increase their
brand loyalty and think more positively about your brand. In
the case of negative comments, the options might be to send a
private message to the customer, send them a list of the nearest
retail stores so that they may exchange the product, or send a
link to the frequently asked question (FAQ) page where this
issue is addressed. The action does not need to be grand, but to
be effective, it should be targeted to the customers specific is-
sue and it should be promptly after the complaint is registered.
If this is done successfully, you will secure a more faithful fol-
lowing from this user, and the user is likely to influence those
in their network of influence toward more positive sentiment
about the brand.
5. Create models that can be used as a feedback loop. With the
details that have been provided by the user, we can join that
information with the structured data that already exists and
create models that solve a number of useful purposes. We
can incorporate positive feedback into updated sales fore-
casts and as triggers to suppliers for more parts. Negative
feedback can be studied for product quality and issues with
manufacturing processes or customer service training or
usability design. As is often the case, in this step we can
learn more from our critics than our advocates. While no
one wants negative feedback, it is often the best source for
product improvement.
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6. Monitor the process. Once this process of identifying sentiment

and moving comments into categories and following busi-
ness rules for dealing with the feedback are in place, there are
opportunities for continual improvement in this area just like
any other. Key metrics for this area are the number of com-
munications issued, average time to respond, and number of
escalated concerns. It is also a worthwhile endeavor to look
for correlation of your brand success and your online efforts. I
doubt a causal link can be established in most cases, but show-
ing efficacy in your efforts is the best way to keep funding and
show the additional value your work brings to the company.

During this case study the focus is on the things that you can do
to monitor your brand and product portfolio. The same ideas can be
employed in trying to gain market share from your competitors. There
are few times people are more willing to change habits (using a par-
ticular brand is a habit) than at the point directly after they have just
expressed frustration with that habit. Your mileage will vary on the
point depending on the goods or services your brand sells. Services are
usually easier to displace than durable goods. But always being on the
lookout for opportunities to take market share from competitors is a
tried and true way for business to thrive.