Requirements for a Comprehensive and Automated Web Reputation Monitoring System: First Iteration

Web reputation plays a critical role for companies and organizations, impacting their competitive positions and ultimately their success and survival on the market. User-generated content published on a variety of so-called Web 2.0 Websites are dramatically changing power relationships in business. Customers use more and more other customers´ judgments, comments, and reviews in their decision-making processes. Companies needed to change their online communication strategies accordingly. However, a systematic approach to Web reputation monitoring, and in turn to the analysis of supporting systems is still lacking. Existing tools only partially support the complex process of Web reputation monitoring, usually applying natural language technology at different stages of maturity. This paper thoroughly investigates the high-level requirements for a general-purpose Web reputation monitoring system. Requirements are classified according to three main steps covering the tasks necessary to a comprehensive Web reputation monitoring strategy. To identify and illustrate the requirements, the paper refers to cases and examples in the tourism sector, whose complexity helps to realize a wide-ranging analysis, thus mitigating the risk of oversimplification.