Suitable for all ages: Using reviews to determine appropriateness of products

Abstract

Product reviews provide insights in to real user experiences which can benefit others when making their purchasing decisions. Text-mining and NLP may be used to extract features and content that could influence a new user. Additionally, recommender systems and filtering interfaces rely on manufacturer reported data in order to support user preferences. In many instances this data may be absent or inaccurate. In this paper we focus on age related features mentioned in user reviews of baby and child related products in order to recommend the appropriate age range of a product. We demonstrate that manufacturer related information is frequently absent and when manufacturer specifications are available, we find they may not reflect real user experiences which could assist a buyer in their decision making process. As a result, we present a simple user interface to allow users assess the age appropriateness of the product.