Sales, product design, and engineering teams benefit immensely from better understanding customer perspectives. How do customers combine a product’s technical specifications (i.e., engineered attributes) to form abstract product benefits (i.e., meta-attributes)? To address this question, the authors use machine learning and natural language processing to develop a methodological framework that extracts a hierarchy of product attributes based on contextual information of how attributes are expressed in consumer reviews. The attribute hierarchy reveals linkages between engineered attributes and meta-attributes within a product category, enabling flexible sentiment analysis that can identify how meta-attributes are received by consumers, and which engineered attributes are main drivers. The framework can guide managers to monitor only portions of review content that are relevant to specific attributes. Moreover, managers can compare products within and between brands, where different names and attribute combinations are often associated with similar benefits. The authors apply the framework to the tablet computer category to generate dashboards and perceptual maps, and provide validations of the attribute hierarchy using both primary and secondary data. Resultant insights allow the exploration of substantive questions, such as how successive generations of iPads were improved by Apple, and why HP and Toshiba discontinued their tablet product lines.

销售、产品设计和工程团队从更好地理解客户观点中受益匪浅。客户如何结合产品的技术规范（即工程属性）来形成抽象的产品利益（即元属性）？为了解决这个问题，作者使用机器学习和自然语言处理来开发一个方法框架，该框架基于消费者评论中如何表达属性的上下文信息提取产品属性的层次结构。属性层次结构揭示了产品类别中工程属性和元属性之间的联系，从而实现灵活的情感分析，可以识别消费者如何接收元属性，以及哪些工程属性是主要驱动因素。该框架可以指导管理人员仅监控与特定属性相关的部分评论内容。此外，管理人员可以比较品牌内部和品牌之间的产品，其中不同的名称和属性组合通常具有相似的好处。作者将该框架应用于平板电脑类别以生成仪表板和感知图，并使用主要和次要数据提供属性层次结构的验证。由此产生的见解允许探索实质性问题，例如苹果如何改进连续几代 iPad，以及为什么惠普和东芝停止了他们的平板电脑产品线。其中不同的名称和属性组合通常具有相似的好处。作者将该框架应用于平板电脑类别以生成仪表板和感知图，并使用主要和次要数据提供属性层次结构的验证。由此产生的见解允许探索实质性问题，例如苹果如何改进连续几代 iPad，以及为什么惠普和东芝停止了他们的平板电脑产品线。其中不同的名称和属性组合通常具有相似的好处。作者将该框架应用于平板电脑类别以生成仪表板和感知图，并使用主要和次要数据提供属性层次结构的验证。由此产生的见解允许探索实质性问题，例如苹果如何改进连续几代 iPad，以及为什么惠普和东芝停止了他们的平板电脑产品线。