RELATOS VERBAIS DE CONSUMIDORES EM AVALIAÇÕES ON-LINE: PROSPECÇÃO COMPUTACIONAL E INTERPRETAÇÕES COM BASE NO BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE MODEL (BPM)

Abstract

The vast amount of information available on the Internet have enabled numerous multidisciplinar investigations aimed to understand nuances of human consumption behavior, especially to identify people's opinions about products and services. From Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), consumer behavior analysis can be conducted focusing on antecedent variables (behavioral setting and consumer learning history) and consequences (reinforcement and punishment, utilitarian and informative) to the occurrence of behavior. The present thesis investigated consumption behavior in the context of tourism, with BPM as theoretical support for interpretations of verbal data extracted from comments available on the TripAdvisor®, a website about tourism. Verbal responses of tourism consumers, engaged in the process of online avaluation of components of tourism products (specifically, Accommodations [ACO], Restaurants [RES] and Attractions [ATR]), were analyzed. Research participants were the unknown individuals who, between the beginning of February and the end of March 2017, emitted 6.438.497 comments distributed among the 100 most evaluated Brazilian touristic destinations at TribAdvisor®. In two studies (Study 1 [E1] and Study 2 [E2]), the thesis research aimed at: a) extraction and analysis of tourist´s verbal information (commentaries) throught a Sentiment Analysis (SA) computational technique; extraction the number of touristic product component (ACO, RES e ATR) evaluative indications emitted by tourism consumers with different statuses as TripColaborators; extraction of the number of votes (Likes) to the comments; b) describe the polarized evaluative response attributed to the 100 evaluated touristic destinations and interpret such responding considering BPM concepts. E1 resulted in the successful development of the SentimentALL tool, focusing on the AS module, and the generation the primary variables explored in E2 (n = 197). In E2, data generated in E1 and derived measures were explored (described in rankings and correlation analyzes) and interpreted using the BPM conceptual framework. With a fundamental exploratory caracter, the interpretative effort suggested profitable research lines and utility of the computational and psychological knowledges integration.