吳俊翰

In the fiercely competitive environment, product design and development plays a critical role in the success of an enterprise, and the core of product design and development lies in the enterprise understanding consumer needs. Enterprises used to understand consumer needs through time and strength consuming questionnaire survey and statistical analyses; however, with the advance of the Internet and the popularity of social media, more and more consumers would leave the perception and appeal on online social media. It reveals a different channel for an enterprise more effectively and objectively understanding consumer needs for products. In this case, effectively assisting enterprises in analyzing valuable information beneficial to product design and development from a large amount of online social media data is an important research issue for enterprises promoting the competitive advantage in the product market.

This study develops a product evolution course mining and prediction mechanism by using the product-related articles and eWOMs on online social media to assist enterprises in rapidly and accurately grasping the development trend of products to further effectively provide important reference for the product design and development. This objective can be achieved by performing the following tasks: (i) designing a web information-based product evolution course mining and prediction process, (ii) developing a web information-based product evolution course mining and prediction method, and (iii) implementing and verifying web information-based product evolution course mining and prediction system.