Analysing competitors' online persuasive themes with text mining

Information is power. Cliché, but true. The Internet has simultaneously empowered individuals. Prospects can click, choose and control their online interactions. For organisations, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. They face more competition and are overloaded with more information than ever before. Manual tracking and processing of competitor activity are tedious, inaccurate, and rapidly outdated. Technology has created the “problem”, and technology can offer potential solutions. This study explores the use of text mining technology to analyse competitors' online promotional text messages. To examine its potential applications, a text mining analysis is applied to top educational sites in the USA. How their Web content is positioned relative to their competitors is analysed and discussed.