Self-perceived occlusion was greatest for power domes, although average level of occlusion did not exceed moderate occlusion on the rating scale. Perceived physical comfort was highest with the open dome and participants' own aids. Plus and power domes were respectively ranked as more uncomfortable than open domes.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to preliminarily investigate the sentiments associated with consumer opinions of personal sound amplification products (PSAPs).
Method
Online reviews of 21 popular PSAPs were collected from the
Amazon.com
website. The reviews for each product were exported to compile individual product-specific text files. A sentiment mining analysis was completed to aggregate the number of positive and negative comments for each product. In addition, the effect of value for money, available features, perceived benefit, and overall perception of PSAPs was evaluated. A correlational analysis was completed to examine the relationship between different PSAP features and the number of positive and negative comments.
Results
Mixed-model analysis of variance showed a significantly higher number of positive comments for high- and mid-cost products in terms of overall perception and perceived benefit compared to low-cost products. For feature attribute, high-cost products had significantly higher positive comments compared to mid- and low-cost products. There was a strong correlation between price and positive comments and a moderate correlation between price and negative comments. Also, there was a significant moderate correlation between presence of compression and feedback suppression PSAP features and positive comments.
Conclusions
Positive sentiments expressed toward PSAPs were found to favor high- and mid-level products. However, there was a considerably high number of negative sentiments reported across all the PSAPs investigated. The noticeable thing is that the negative comments do not change significantly across price ranges. However, the positive comments significantly increase with an increase in product price range. This indicates a possible increase in benefit with high-cost products. However, this claim requires further empirical evidence through controlled studies.
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