Dr. andrei kirilenko: sentiment analysis and customer satisfaction on EFTI Seminar
Last Friday, March 13, 2020 we had the presentation from Dr. Andrei Kirilenko titled “Re-reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina helps analysis of tourist dissatisfaction”. The project is a collaboration between Dr. Kirilenko and Dr. Stepchenkova (EFTI Researchers) and Dr. Xiangyi Dai from Beijing Capital University.
Dr. Kirilenko explains how the tourism industry utilizes Big Data to analyze user-generated content to do sentiment analysis and topic modeling (analyze of the meaning of reviews). The Anna Karenina Principle (TAK) derives from the concept presented on the Leo Tolstoy’s novel that “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” and affirms that “while no feature guarantees success, many guarantee failure” (Shugan, 2007, 146). This principle is universal and can be applied to economics, ecology, agriculture, healthcare, etc.
The Anna Karenina Principle suggests that, in tourism review analysis, reviews of satisfied customers would be more similar between each other, mentioning in their reviews similar factors that influenced their satisfaction. On the other hand, dissatisfied customers would mention more reasons why they are not satisfied, and it would be true for visitors from different places and profiles.
To prove this, Dr. Kirilenko and his group analyzed reviews from 3 destinations and/or attractions: Terracotta Army in Xi’an, China, Chicken Itza, Mexico, and the Red Square in Russia. From all cases the group got as results that the positive reviews were generally more interpretable, while the topics extracted from the negative reviews were in the majority uninterpretable.
From their study they could conclude that the Anna Karenina Principle actually plays a role in these reviews: there are a much larger diversity of issues generating dissatisfaction resulting in negative reviews in comparison with aspects generating positive reviews. The managerial implications of this study suggest that attractions and destinations should use their most distinguishing features to differentiate themselves from competitors. In addition, every complaint may reflect a real problem faced by the individuals, and the topics that appear the most in complaints should be taken into consideration to identify persistent issues and be more prone to solve them.
The EFTI seminars are something our students and faculty always look forward to, as they provide an opportunity to learn more from other’s researches and engage in meaningful discussions. We started already to transition our seminars to a virtual format to accommodate the current world requirements facing the COVID-19. Until the remainder of the semester we will host our EFTI seminars via Zoom. Check www.uftourism.org/seminarseries for the link and details on how to connect.
