Qualitative identification of associated words with the respective online service ratings Diya Guha Roy Goa Institute of Management, Goa, India, and Sujoy Bhattacharya Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India Abstract Purpose – Collectively knowledge is mentioned to surpass the traditional assets such as workers, property and financial investment. The research studies on how the existing knowledge can be merged with new knowledge for further development of organizational progress is moving from nascent to active state. In this context, the applications of online data pose a research gap in the domain of hospital review ratings. The purpose of this study is to explore how this raw tacit knowledge can be transformed to explicit keywords associated with individual review ratings of the hospital. Design/methodology/approach – The authors have attempted to decrypt the tacit knowledge extracted from Facebook page of nine Indian hospitals (sources for the nine hospitals) using NVivo 12.3 to explain the resources associated with the poor or good review ratings. Findings – Distinct patterns emerged with review ratings and associated words, which can be used to improve the facets of health-care services. Research limitations/implications – The data used are only from India catering to national and international patients. Originality/value – The sentiment analysis and word cloud associated with individual review rating can be further used for devising finer branding scales, as well as be practically used for real-time branding efforts by health-care industry. Keywords Knowledge management, Online knowledge sharing, Tacit knowledge, Explicit knowledge, Content analysis, Health-care review ratings Paper type Research paper Introduction Since the beginning of the adaptive human civilization, in every creation, innovation and progress, the pertinent “knowledge” is acknowledged as the most important pillar for advancement. Alavi and Leidner (2001, p. 109) define knowledge as “the result of cognitive processing triggered by the inflow of new stimuli.” The authors describe knowledge as an accumulation of “personalized information (which may or may not be new, unique, useful or accurate) related to facts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations and judgments” (p. 109). The perseverance of a successful knowledge management system (KMS) in a service-based industry is to compile the intangible assets of information in structured explicit format for reusability, performance improvement purposes, and thereby progressing the competitive edge, value creation and efficiency (Gonz alez-Loureiro et al., 2015). The authors elucidate that the development of new knowledge is not static, and recently being administrated by information technology driven data. They call for a “more theory-driven research in the field of service innovation and its performance” (p. 57). Online service ratings Received 14 October 2019 Revised 26 April 2020 Accepted 6 May 2020 International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing © Emerald Publishing Limited 1750-6123 DOI 10.1108/IJPHM-10-2019-0070 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1750-6123.htm