Text Analytics

I have been reading and researching about Analytics lately (although I agree its already one of the high focus areas in retail) and stumbled upon something interesting related to analyzing customer comments/feedback using Text Analytics. Text Analytics is essentially searching for keywords to identify customer trends. As the article explains - "For instance, if one person in 100 mentioned something, it would be missed. But if in 100,000 responses, 1% of people say the same thing, it could be noticed as important, like a new trend that's developing or something wrong with a product that's just starting to surface." This technique is being used to identify emerging trends through customer interactions on social networks, blogs and a number of other online forums. Also as the article cites a means of finding whether a particular strategy is working or not - "Starwood, for instance, in another Anderson text-analytics study of frequent-traveler website Flyer Talk, discovered that its guests discussed beds and showers more favorably than other hotels, while competitor Hilton's guests more often discussed food and health clubs positively. That validated the "tens of millions" spent on new beds in Starwood hotels"