Understanding value perceptions and propositions: A machine learning approach

It is well established in marketing literature that aligning value creation with customers' aspirations promotes satisfaction, repurchasing, and competitiveness. This study employs structural topic modeling and sentiment analyses on online documents to provide an empirical account of value alignment from customers' and service providers' perspectives. This generates insights into i) the attributes valued by customers and service providers, respectively, ii) the valence of those attributes, iii) the sources of value formation, iv) the value alignment between customers and service providers, and v) the relative importance of value attributes for budget and upscale hotels. The results indicate that guests focus on interaction, cleanliness, and comfort, while service providers most frequently discuss service-related aspects; however, the first two attributes also affect hotel ratings. Furthermore, the sources of value differ in terms of valence. These insights show that structural topic modeling is a scalable approach to understanding value from both perspectives.