8. Conclusions
The major contribution of this paper is the linking of aspect identification and semantic classification methods to explain and predict overall customer satisfaction. First, a method is proposed by which unstructured user generated text data is transformed into ready-to-analyze data without the need to determine aspects a priori. Second, a Bayesian model is proposed that allows prediction of individual aspect ratings, and further enables discovery of the relative im475 portance of each aspect from each contributor’s perspective. Consequently, the method also allows for prediction of overall customer satisfaction. The model presented in this paper has low dimensionality that can be scaled to analyze very large data sets in an automated fashion. Results of the Bayesian method are reproducible. Thorough testing illustrates that the methods presented in this paper are effective in discovering, explaining, and predicting the most important aspects driving overall customer satisfaction.