Automated Taxonomy Construction Using Large Language Models: A Comparative Study of Fine-Tuning and Prompt Engineering
Bình Dương Vũ, Rajat R. Naik, Bao Khanh Nguyen, Sina Mehraeen, Matthias Hemmje · Eng—Advances in Engineering · 2025
Taxonomies provide essential hierarchical structures for classifying information, enabling effective retrieval and knowledge organization in diverse domains such as e-commerce, academic research, and web search. Traditional taxonomy construction, heavily reliant on manual curation by domain experts, faces significant challenges in scalability, cost, and consistency when dealing with the exponential growth of digital data. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) present powerful opportunities for automating this complex process. This paper explores the potential of LLMs for automated taxonomy generation, focusing on methodologies incorporating semantic embedding generation, keyword extraction, and machine learning clustering algorithms. We specifically investigate and conduct a comparative analysis of two primary LLM-based approaches using a dataset of eBay product descriptions. The first approach involves fine-tuning a pre-trained LLM using structured hierarchical data derived from chain-of-layer clustering outputs. The second employs prompt-engineering techniques to guide LLMs in generating context-aware hierarchical taxonomies based on clustered keywords without explicit model retraining. Both methodologies are evaluated for their efficacy in constructing organized multi-level hierarchical taxonomies. Evaluation using semantic similarity metrics (BERTScore and Cosine Similarity) against a ground truth reveals that the fine-tuning approach yields higher overall accuracy and consistency (BERTScore F1: 70.91%; Cosine Similarity: 66.40%) compared to the prompt-engineering approach (BERTScore F1: 61.66%; Cosine Similarity: 60.34%). We delve into the inherent trade-offs between these methods concerning semantic fidelity, computational resource requirements, result stability, and scalability. Finally, we outline potential directions for future research aimed at refining LLM-based taxonomy construction systems to handle large dynamic datasets with enhanced accuracy, robustness, and granularity.