{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,28]],"date-time":"2026-03-28T00:44:04Z","timestamp":1774658644228,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,1]],"date-time":"2025-09-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1756684800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100006595","name":"Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS\/CCCDI-UEFISCDI","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["COFUND-CETP-SMART-LEM-1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["COFUND-CETP-SMART-LEM-1"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100006595","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JTAER"],"abstract":"<jats:p>User-generated content, such as product and app reviews, offers more than just sentiment. It provides a rich spectrum of emotional expression that reveals users\u2019 experiences, frustrations and expectations. Traditional sentiment analysis, which typically classifies text as positive or negative, lacks the nuance needed to fully understand the emotional drivers behind customer feedback. In this research, we focus on fine-grained emotion classification using core emotions. By identifying specific emotions rather than sentiment polarity, we enable more actionable insights for e-commerce and app development, supporting strategies such as feature refinement, marketing personalization and proactive customer engagement. We leverage the Hugging Face Emotions dataset and adopt a two-phase modeling approach. In the first phase, we use a pre-trained DistilBERT model as a feature extractor and evaluate multiple classical classifiers (Logistic Regression, Support Vector Classifier, Random Forest) to establish performance baselines. In the second phase, we fine-tune the DistilBERT model end-to-end using the Hugging Face Trainer API, optimizing classification performance through task-specific adaptation. Training is tracked using the Weights &amp; Biases (wandb) API. Comparative analysis highlights the substantial performance gains from fine-tuning, particularly in capturing informal or noisy language typical in user reviews. The final fine-tuned model is applied to a dataset of customers\u2019 reviews, identifying the dominant emotions expressed. Our results demonstrate the practical value of emotion-aware analytics in uncovering the underlying \u201cwhy\u201d behind user sentiment, enabling more empathetic decision-making across product design, customer support and user experience (UX) strategy.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jtaer20030221","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,1]],"date-time":"2025-09-01T14:02:46Z","timestamp":1756735366000},"page":"221","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Extracting Emotions from Customer Reviews Using Text Mining, Large Language Models and Fine-Tuning Strategies"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9005-5181","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Simona-Vasilica","family":"Oprea","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, No. 6 Piata Romana, 010374 Bucharest, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0961-352X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adela","family":"B\u00e2ra","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, No. 6 Piata Romana, 010374 Bucharest, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"60","DOI":"10.1016\/j.intmar.2016.05.004","article-title":"The Role of Emotions for the Perceived Usefulness in Online Customer Reviews","volume":"36","author":"Felbermayr","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. 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