Structural Comparisons of the Semantic Interface of the Top Cosmetic Brands on the Web by Network Analysis

Web presentations of consumer products serve as an interface between businesses and consumers. The present paper focused on the verbal information on the webs of the top two skincare brands in Japan. Term by context matrices created from the texts were truncated by SVD to construct graphs that represented high similarities among terms. In pursuit of essential terms and the networks surrounding them, the primary clusters were decomposed in to communities in which the core nodes and their neighborhoods were identified. Though the brands differed greatly in concentrations of clusters, communities and neighborhoods, they showed similarities in the properties of cores. Of particular interest was the core term "plump" that appeared in both brands. Probably, this reflected the shared business awareness of the central concern about skincare among the Japanese consumers. In lieu of conclusions, our plan of further inquiries were stated.