Applying Keyword Analysis to Predicting Agriculture Product Price Index: The Case of the Chinese Farming Market
Zhiyuan Wang, Ohbyung Kwon, Fan Liu · Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review · 2016
The prediction of prices of agricultural products in the agriculture IT sector plays a significant role in the economic life of consumers and anyone engaged in agricultural business, and as these prices fluctuate more often than do other prices, the prediction of these prices holds a great deal of research promise. For this reason, academic literature has provided studies on the factors influencing the prices of agricultural products and the price index. However, as these factors vary, they are difficult to predict, resulting in the challenge of acquiring quantitative data. China is one example of a country without a reliable prediction system for prices of agricultural products. Fortunately, disclosed heterogeneous data can be found on the Internet, which allows for the effective collection of factors related to the prediction of these product prices through the use of text mining. The data provided online is valuable in that they reflect the opinions of the general public in real-time. Accordingly, this study aims to use heterogeneous data from the Internet and suggest a model predicting the prices of agricultural products before functional analyses. Toward this end, data analyses were conducted on the Chinese agricultural products market, one of the largest markets in the world.