From The New York Times:
The Great Wall of China has more than 9,000 Google reviews, with an average of 4.2 stars. Not bad for one of the most astonishing achievements in human history.
But you can’t please everyone.
“Not very tall. Or big. Just sayin. I kinda liked it. Sort of,” wrote one ambivalent visitor of the structure, which stretches thousands of miles. Another complained, “I don’t see the hype in this place it’s really run down and old … why wouldn’t you update something like this? No USB plug ins or outlets anywhere.” Someone else announced that he’s “Not a wall guy. Laaaaaaaaammme.”
Even Shakespeare can’t escape the wrath of consumer scorn. One reviewer on Amazon awarded Hamlet just two stars: “Whoever said Shakespeare was a genius lied. Unless genius is just code word for boring, then they’re spot on. Watch the movie version so you only waste two hours versus 20.”
. . . .
We use reviews to vet our options. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of American adults say they sometimes or always read online reviews for new purchases. And more 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. But research on the biases and demographics of online reviewers — and our own, often errant interpretations — suggests that our faith in reviews is misguided.
. . . .
There are many more positive reviews online than there are negative ones, studies show, which creates a scarcity of negative reviews that we associate with value.
For instance: In a data sample from Amazon, just 4.8 percent of reviews with a verified purchase were rated one star, whereas 59 percent had five stars, according to a study published in 2014 by The Journal of Marketing Research and led by Duncan Simester, a marketing professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management.
“The infrequent nature of negative reviews may help to distinguish them from other reviews,” Dr. Simester wrote in an email. We consequently pay more attention to them.
. . . .
We also think of negative reviews as windows into what could go wrong. Is this camera’s memory card going to go kaput in the middle 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 because they highlight defects — even if they’re not actually 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 show.
. . . .
Reviews are subjective, and the tiny subset of people who leave them aren’t average.
People who write online reviews are more likely to buy things in unusual sizes, make returns, be married, have more children, be younger and less wealthy, and have graduate degrees than the average consumer, according to Dr. Simester’s 2014 study. Online reviewers are also 50 percent more likely to shop sales, and they buy four times more products.
“Very few people write reviews. It’s about 1.5 percent, or 15 people out of 1,000,” Dr. Simester said. “Should we be relying on these people if we’re part of the other 985?”
. . . .
Another reason to be wary is roughly one in 15 people review products they haven’t actually purchased or used, according to Dr. Simester. These “self-appointed brand managers” write speculative, unsolicited negative reviews to offer the company “feedback.”
Link to the rest at The New York Times
Of course, bad reviews can backfire.
To my personal knowledge, the bad reviews on Tom Kratman’s author page have resulted in sales.
Another aspect is the number of authors who think reviews all have to be positive. The point of a review is for that person to give their opinion. YOu don’t like it? Don’t publish anything then.
However, some of the stuff in the article is egregiously listed with no context. For the “frequency” of positive reviews, it’s a double-edged sword…people search for stuff they want which likely puts them in the world of 2.5/5.0 before they even start. On top of that, they do a bunch of curation to find one that sounds like what they want in features. That puts them in a world of 4.0/5.0. If they get it and it’s great, ka-ching; if it they get it and they’re disappointed their new watch doesn’t slice bread for them, they might be back down to 3.0 or 2.0, but they are unlikely to go down to 1.0. Most reviewers out there only go to 1.0 if something is egregiously bad with the experience — either it was something they tried randomly (rare) and it wasn’t for them, or more likely, they were greatly disappointed from their expectations.
However, I have a different bias…I will only review a book if I finished it, and if it sucks, I don’t finish it. Ergo, I’m likely 3.0/5.0 or above most of the time. If it is less than 3.0, it either means I had a reason to stick with it, OR something went horribly wrong (like the ending, for a book).
Context matters more than the “4.8% are verified purchases” and one star.
P.
Don’t forget, people and corporations buy 5 star / good reviews. Very few spend money on bad reviews for competitors.
Negative reviews of any length say a lot about the writer as well as the item/book being reviewed.
I love the ones which show the complete lack of attention on an obvious topic – those actually make some review readers try something they might not have tried.
And then there’s the (to me) unimaginable replies left to questions: no, I didn’t read it/I didn’t buy it/I don’t know – I think those people are just trying to get their stats up.
They do bring averages down with their low ratings, though. That’s annoying to the recipients of the reviews.
Robert Silverberg wrote a 1-star review about a short collection of his works for sale on Amazon. Said they were not very good, and he had not bothered to renew the copyrights (back when copyright was 28 years plus another 28 on renewal). Thus, the works were public domain.
Can’t find it now on Amazon. Perhaps it was removed.
Can I trust Robert Silverberg to review his own work? Was his review annoying to the party who put up his PD stories?
Let’s see… 28+28, depending on when that was posted, that’d be 1960-ish.
Of course, Silverberg has his own collections of his early work out there competing in the market…
They would of had a better piece if they’d removed the words ‘negative’ and ‘online’ as you can’t trust any reviews.
There have been false reviews since the first snake oil salesman told their customers they’d get a discount on their next bottle if they’d tell their friends how great the stuff was.
Back in the BC years (before cable) there were two movie critics that if they both gave a new movie a ‘big thumb’s up’ I knew not to bother because it was a dog’s breakfast.
Not all negative reviews are equal. They’re like any essay or opinion piece. The author has to back up their arguments with evidence. The reader has to judge how valid they are on that basis.
Apparently, the Times doesn’t understand the concept of internet trolls. Not a single mention of them in the article. I suspect some of their quotes are from trolls.
http://horseysurprise.tumblr.com/
The NYT doesn’t understand the concepts for a lot of things.