Mining quality determinants of product-service systems from user-generated contents

Abstract

The concurrent availability of an ever-increasing volume of User-Generated Content (UGC) and text mining techniques has enabled methods to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research that was unimaginable a few years ago. These investigations have proved to generate interesting insights with potential implications in manufacturing and engineering design. This paper introduces a novel practical methodology to address the following research issue: how to infer the quality determinants of a Product-Service System (PSS) from UGCs? Analyzing a sample of UGCs by means of a topic modeling method, the idea of this study is to produce and examine the set of determinants relevant to the perception of the quality of a specific PSS. The application of the proposed approach is exemplified on a specific use-oriented PSS: car-sharing.

Keywords:

• user-generated contents
• quality determinants
• product-service systems
• topic modeling
• car-sharing

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partially supported by “Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca”. Award “TESUN-83486178370409 finanziamento dipartimenti di eccellenza CAP.1694 TIT. 232 ART. 6.

Notes on contributors

Luca Mastrogiacomo

Luca Mastrogiacomo is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Production Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. His main scientific interests currently concern the areas of Service Quality and Quality Engineering. Mastrogiacomo may be contacted at [email protected].

Federico Barravecchia

Federico Barravecchia is a Postdoc at the Department of Management and Production Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. His main scientific interests currently concern the areas of Service Quality and Quality Engineering. Barravecchia may be contacted at [email protected].

Fiorenzo Franceschini

Fiorenzo Franceschini is a Professor of Quality Engineering at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) – Department of Management and Production Engineering. He is author or co-author of nine books and more than 270 published papers in prestigious scientific journals, and international conference proceedings. His current research interests are in the areas of Quality Engineering, Performance Measurements Systems and Service Quality. Franceschini may be contacted at [email protected]

Frederic Marimon

Frederic Marimon Viadiu is a Professor of Quality & Innovation at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Spain) – Department of Economy and Business Organization. He is author or co-author of three books and more than 200 published papers in prestigious scientific journals, and international conference proceedings. His current research interests are in the areas of Quality Management, quality assessment in services, and diffusion analysis of different management standards. Marimon may be contacted at [email protected]