Enhance your competitive edge with automated Web data collection and comprehensive aggregation of product reviews
Customer ratings and reviews often drive fast-moving markets. Competitive intelligence professionals continuously monitor customer review data to understand customer perception across products and channels. Aggregating and analyzing these product reviews can help you:
- Enhance product positioning
- Make more informed and timely decisions about product enhancements
- Detect potential product quality or services issues early
- Gain a comprehensive perspective on your competitive landscape
Aggregating product reviews at scale requires an automated Web data extraction solution. One approach is to write your own scripts for Web scraping. But some of the best product review sources — YouTube reviews, blogs and forums — are very difficult for scripts and Web scrapers to access. And it’s difficult for scripts and scrapers to detect “just the changes”—a perspective that could enhance your competitive advantage.
An automated Web data collection solution allows you to systematically access and retrieve data from the best Web sources, including:
- External sources
- Social media
- Surface Web data
- Hidden Web data
- Secured sites
In the examples that follow, Connotate’s solution enabled collection of Web-based product reviews for strategic results.
Make more informed and timely business decisions
A manufacturer wanted a timely feedback loop for product enhancement by extracting product reviews from trustworthy sources, including YouTube comments, which are hard to access with scripts and scrapers. Using an automated Web data extraction and monitoring solution, the company was able to monitor YouTube and follow relevant links to find online conversations about the company’s product, extracting more than 700 reviews in mere minutes. Through this process, the manufacturer swiftly uncovered negative sentiment about a specific product feature, revealing an important area to be addressed in the next generation of product design.
Detect potential product quality and services issues early
A manufacturer needed a faster, more efficient way to detect potential product quality issues to ensure its ability to retain its national distribution channels. Using an automated Web data extraction and monitoring solution, the company captures product reviews from distributor and retailer websites daily and analyzes the data by rating and geography. Through this process, the company quickly determined that goods were arriving damaged in one area of the country and was able to swiftly correct the problem.
Automated Web data extraction and monitoring delivers benefits for the intelligence professional
Strategically, automated Web-based competitive product review data collection can benefit the intelligence professional and the company through:
- Optimal product positioning
- Informed product enhancements
- Brand reputation protection
Learn more about how Connotate’s competitive and pricing intelligence solution can help you. Download our free white paper, “Competitive Intelligence and the Web.”
Other posts in this series:
The Intelligent Guide to Competitive Intelligence, Part 1 — Pricing
The post The Intelligent Guide to Competitive Intelligence, Part 2 — Product Reviews appeared first on Connotate.