Deriving Competitive Intelligence from Multifaceted User Behavior Data: an Interpretable Machine Learning Framework

Competitive intelligence is essential for operations management decision-making. Beyond traditional offline information channels, firms increasingly gather online data and resources to generate comprehensive competitive intelligence. This study derives competitive intelligence in large markets by developing an interpretable machine learning framework that integrates multifaceted user behavior data, including user favorites, user-commented products, and user textual comments. Considering the complementary nature of these data sources, we first combine latent features derived from user favorites and user-commented products to improve submarket inference. Using these inferred submarkets as supervised signals, we connect user-commented products and associated textual comments to uncover consumer perceptions. We estimate the model using multifaceted data on online user behavior in the automotive domain. The results demonstrate that our model effectively improves submarket identification, captures consumer perceptions, and predicts competitive positions for new entrants. The derived competitive intelligence helps managers make more informed decisions in product operations and marketing strategies.