Analyzing Competitive Technical Intelligence of Cell Phones with Self-organizing Map

摘要

Self-organizing map (SOM) is an artificial neural network technique for visualizing high dimensional input data in a low dimensional space by projecting similar input data onto the same or neighboring cells. This allows users to view the similarities and differences among competitors. In this study, the cell phone industry was selected. The authors examine how the SOM technique can be used to identify key competitors and combined with principal component analysis to determine important technical attributes of cell phones, upon which the advantages and disadvantages of competitors were summarized. An enhanced U-matrix was presented and applied to the SOM display. The leading competitors were defined in terms of some important technical attributes.