Sentiment Analysis

Definition

Sentiment analysis (also called opinion mining) is an AI technique using natural language processing to identify and extract subjective information from text—determining whether the expressed opinion is positive, negative, or neutral. Advanced sentiment analysis also detects emotions (joy, anger, sadness, surprise), intensity (slightly positive vs. extremely positive), and aspects (which specific features are praised or criticized). In marketing, sentiment analysis applications include: social media monitoring (tracking brand mentions and public opinion), customer review analysis (identifying product strengths/weaknesses), support ticket analysis (detecting frustrated customers before churn), campaign response measurement, and competitive analysis. The technology works by training ML models on labeled examples to recognize patterns in language that indicate sentiment. Accuracy varies: 70-80% for basic positive/negative classification, lower for nuanced emotional detection. Human review often validates AI findings for critical decisions.