What Risks Do You Run in Posting Online Reviews
Why You Can't Really Trust Negative Online Reviews
Research suggests that people heed negative reviews more than than positive ones — despite their questionable brownie.
The Great Wall of Communist china has more than 9,000 Google reviews, with an average of four.2 stars. Non bad for one of the most astonishing achievements in human history.
But yous can't please everyone.
"Not very tall. Or big. Just sayin. I kinda liked it. Sort of," wrote one ambivalent visitor of the construction, which stretches thousands of miles . Another complained, "I don't see the hype in this place information technology'due south actually run down and onetime … why wouldn't you update something similar this? No USB plug ins or outlets anywhere." Someone else announced that he's "Not a wall guy. Laaaaaaaaammme."
Fifty-fifty Shakespeare can't escape the wrath of consumer scorn. One reviewer on Amazon awarded Village just ii stars: "Whoever said Shakespeare was a genius lied. Unless genius is just code word for tedious, then they're spot on. Watch the motion picture version so you only waste two hours versus 20."
It'due south no wonder why we live and buy by online reviews: The Washington Post recently reported that a tertiary of American adults use a computer or telephone to buy something at to the lowest degree once a week — "about as oft as we accept out the trash." Terminal December, 75 percent of Americans said they would practise "most of their holiday shopping on Amazon," according to CNBC'southward "All-America Economic Survey."
Nosotros apply reviews to vet our options. In 2016, the Pew Research Center constitute that 82 percentage of American adults say they sometimes or ever read online reviews for new purchases. And more than than two-thirds of regular review readers believe that they're "generally accurate."
Marketing data indicates that negative reviews in particular dramatically influence our buying behaviors. Only research on the biases and demographics of online reviewers — and our own, oftentimes errant interpretations — suggests that our faith in reviews is misguided.
Why nosotros intendance so much almost negative reviews
In that location are many more positive reviews online than there are negative ones, studies show, which creates a scarcity of negative reviews that we acquaintance with value.
For instance: In a data sample from Amazon, just 4.eight percent of reviews with a verified purchase were rated one star, whereas 59 percent had 5 stars, according to a written report published in 2014 by The Journal of Marketing Research and led by Duncan Simester, a marketing professor at the One thousand.I.T. Sloan School of Direction.
"The infrequent nature of negative reviews may assist to distinguish them from other reviews," Dr. Simester wrote in an e-mail. Nosotros consequently pay more than attention to them.
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We also think of negative reviews equally windows into what could become wrong. Is this camera's memory card going to get kaput in the heart of my honeymoon? Are these socks scratchy? Dr. Simester pointed out that people may see negative reviews as more informative, and therefore more valuable, than positive ones considering they highlight defects — even if they're not really more accurate.
"We want to feel secure in our decision-making processes," said Lauren Dragan, who analyzes consumer feedback as the audio tech products reviewer at Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews and recommends products. We use negative reviews to understand our risk and reduce our losses, studies prove.
Plus, after reports that five-star reviews are often fake, people may depend on negative reviews more than positive ones because they see them as more trustworthy.
Online reviews are less trustworthy than we recall
The brownie of all reviews — even existent ones — is questionable. A 2016 study published in The Journal of Consumer Research looked at whether online reviews reflected objective quality as rated by Consumer Reports. The researchers found very little correlation.
Why?
Reviews are subjective, and the tiny subset of people who leave them aren't boilerplate.
People who write online reviews are more than probable to buy things in unusual sizes, make returns, be married, have more than children, be younger and less wealthy, and have graduate degrees than the boilerplate consumer, according to Dr. Simester's 2014 report. Online reviewers are also l percent more probable to shop sales, and they buy iv times more than products.
"Very few people write reviews. It'southward about ane.5 percent, or 15 people out of 1,000," Dr. Simester said. "Should we be relying on these people if we're function of the other 985?"
What's more than, reviews are often arbitrary and coexisting. For example, the sentiment of travelers' reviews hinges on their companionship. A study published final fall in Electronic Commerce Inquiry and Applications, looking at 125,076 online reviews, found that people traveling with significant others wrote the most positive reviews, followed by those traveling with friends or family. Reviewers traveling lone or for business were the virtually negative. Our experiences change depending on our expectations, travel expertise and who we're with.
People's motivations likewise taint their neutrality. Take TripAdvisor's "Super Contributors," whose reviews tend to be more negative than those by less active members, according to a forthcoming study from Ulrike Gretzel, a communications professor at the University of Southern California and the managing director of inquiry at Netnografica. Having formed identities around existence good travel reviewers, Super Contributors may "write more critically to appear more professional," Dr. Gretzel said. Nevertheless, consumers disproportionately value and trust reviews professing expertise.
Put simply, nosotros should distrust online reviews "because emotions are involved," Ms. Dragan said.
Some other reason to be wary is roughly one in xv people review products they haven't actually purchased or used, according to Dr. Simester. These "cocky-appointed brand managers" write speculative, unsolicited negative reviews to offer the company "feedback." The problem is consumers are bad at determining which reviews are based on actual experiences and which aren't, said Dr. Simester. "We are easily fooled."
Get savvier about how yous read reviews
Withal, reviews can exist helpful gauges when you lot're buying stuff — and then long as you lot keep in listen all the caveats around them.
First, weed out the most polarized perspectives. People are much more likely to write reviews if they take extreme emotions nearly something, said Eric K. Clemons, who teaches information management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. This is why you meet so many rave reviews and so many rancorous ones.
Fifty-fifty people who don't initially have strong feelings often develop them in response to survey questions — something called the mere-measurement effect.
"Nosotros are socially conditioned to give answers when someone/something asks us a question," Dr. Gretzel wrote in an electronic mail. So if we don't have a pre-existing, well-defined stance, we make one up.
When you're reading reviews, attempt to notice ones that are closer to the median, Ms. Dragan advised. She deliberately looks at three-star reviews first considering they tend to be more moderate, detailed and honest. Unfortunately, research suggests that most of us instinctively practise only the opposite: We prefer farthermost reviews considering they're less ambivalent and therefore easier to process.
Second, enquire yourself: "Is this person like me? Are the issues mentioned ones I care nigh?" For example, Dr. Simester recently bought a pair of ski pants online. He read the reviews and nigh people liked them, merely ane guy didn't. "It turned out his body shape wasn't the same as mine," Dr. Simester said, and then he disregarded the review.
Dissecting people'due south preferences can be useful even if yous don't concur with them. Dr. Clemons, an I.P.A. fan who uses RateBeer.com, said, "If a Scandinavian who really likes lagers complains that a beer tastes mode also hoppy, that may mean I should buy information technology."
Finally, pay attention to contextual details and specific facts rather than reviewers' general impressions and ratings. The number of stars someone selects frequently has "very little to exercise with" their review text, Dr. Gretzel said. People accept different rating standards, and written explanations are inherently more than nuanced.
Focusing on the most thorough reviews may also protect against getting duped past fake ones. In experiments where Dr. Gretzel and her collaborators presented both existent and imitation reviews, readers distinguished betwixt the two ameliorate when reviews were longer.
And if you're still non certain whether a review is fake, browse the reviewer'due south profile. Dr. Clemons said that "someone who'southward paid to write reviews probably isn't doing a lot of writing under the same name." His own research omitted reviews from profiles containing fewer than 10 reviews, "and that took care of a lot of paid nonsense," he said.
All that said, real reviewers are usually genuinely trying to aid: Enquiry consistently shows that people are most motivated by helping others make decisions.
"They experience that they have benefited from other people's reviews, and so they want to requite back," Dr. Gretzel said. "They call up it's for the greater good."
Caroline Beaton is a freelance writer and producer who sends a monthly newsletter about science and society. Sign upwardly to receive it hither .
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/smarter-living/trust-negative-product-reviews.html
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