Korean e-commerce platforms turn to AI for in-depth customer review analysis

[Photo provided by SSG.com]

South Korean e-commerce players are applying artificial intelligence (AI) technology to their platforms to analyze consumer reviews, which allows them to improve the quality of products and delivery.

SSG.com Corp., an online grocery and shopping mall under Shinsegae Group, is at the forefront.

The company announced Thursday that it has self-developed an AI analysis system for operation with an aim to improve product satisfaction by analyzing customer reviews in real time.

“We adopted the system in August 2021 and we have enhanced big data analysis through a monthly average of 2.5 million consumer reviews,” said an unnamed official from SSG.com.

The analysis system is based on Named Entity Recognition (NER), a natural language processing technique that identifies key elements of natural language in a text. The AI-backed technology scans the text, classifies it into several categories, and even understands the textual nuance.

For example, when a consumer writes a review that says, “This fruit is sweet and fresh, but delivered at the poor quality of packaging,” the NER system classifies the review to each of the 3 categories - flavor/sweetness, freshness, and packaging/delivery - by identifying the keywords.

After detecting the text‘s tone to figure out how positive or negative it sounds, the AI-backed tool sends to each product manager the analysis results such as “for sweetness, 80 percent positive and 20 percent negative,” or “90 percent in overall satisfaction.”

SSG.com used the AI-generated analysis with 7 specific categories for grocery products, such as “taste” and “price.”

The AI-backed tool can well recognize somewhat confusing phrases in Korean, like “Neoguri tastes better than Shin Ramyun.” The technology understands that Neoguri here refers to the instant noodle brand instead of a raccoon, which in Korean is pronounced as neoguri.

“We have been committed to building up the AI system in which half the workforce at the headquarters is engineers or in relevant positions,” said the company’s official.

“The use of AI tools allowed us to quickly respond to every customer feedback by reducing workloads of analyzing reviews,” the official added.

SSG.com plans to use feedback data to improve the quality control process.

Other e-commerce channels also focus on review analysis. Coupang Corp. has a review-based listing that recommends trustworthy products to customers. Grocery chain Homeplus Co. also takes into consideration the reviews of its fresh products to enhance customer satisfaction.