Exploring Pre-Launch Consumer Perceptions of the iPhone 18 Pro on TikTok Using BERTopic: A Multilingual Large-Scale Topic Modeling Analysis

Purpose – This study investigates pre-launch consumer perceptions of the iPhone 18 Pro by examining multilingual TikTok discussions. It addresses the limited understanding of how consumers interpret product rumors, compare competing brands, and form purchase intentions before an official product launch.

Methodology – A quantitative computational approach was employed using BERTopic, a transformer-based topic modeling framework. A total of 105,619 comments were collected on June 10, 2026, from the three most popular TikTok videos discussing iPhone 18 Pro rumors. Comments in more than 20 languages were detected, translated into English, and analyzed using BERTopic. Topic interpretation was supported by TF-IDF bar charts, a cosine similarity heatmap, and an intertopic distance map.

Findings – Five coherent topics emerged: general reactions and comparative sentiment, iPhone–Android brand comparisons, purchase intention and pricing concerns, aesthetic preferences related to color and design, and premium hardware features. The visualizations revealed a tripartite structure comprising a mainstream discourse core, an isolated brand-comparison axis, and a distinct aesthetic niche. The high cosine similarity between general reactions and purchase-related concerns (0.848) indicates that upgrade indifference and price sensitivity form the dominant conceptual basis of consumer reservation.

Value – This study contributes methodologically by integrating multilingual translation with BERTopic for large-scale social media consumer research. It also provides practical insight into how pre-launch rumors, pricing expectations, brand comparisons, and design preferences shape early consumer evaluations of premium smartphones

Keywords: Social Media Analytics; BERTopic; TikTok; Consumer Perception