Discovering Business Intelligence from the Subjective Web Data

The online word-of-mouth behavior that exists today in the Web represents new and measurable sources of information. The automated discovery or mining of consumer opinions from these sources is of great importance for marketing intelligence and product benchmarking. Techniques are now being developed to effectively and easily mine the consumer opinions from the Web data and to timely deliver them to companies and individual consumers. This study investigates this emerging field named ‘opinion mining’ in terms of what it is, what it can do, and how it could be used effectively for business intelligence (BI). A rigorous review of the research literature on opinion mining is conducted to explore its current state, issues and challenges for its use in developing business applications for competitive advantage. The study aims to assist business managers to better understand the current opportunities and challenges in using opinion mining for deriving BI. Future research directions for further development of the field are also identified.