How much is a good on-line review worth?

In recent surveys  around 60% of shoppers say they use customer reviews as part of their purchasing behaviour.  It might be for a hotel, a book, a holiday, a CD, anything…

But nothing on the internet stays still so now people are selling reviews – the going rate for writing a glowing piece is about $10 in the US according to the New York Times.

Likewise people who get great reviews for their product or service (especially hotels) are starting to thank the writers with discounts, gifts and the like.  And when there’s a bad review they are trying to get that taken down.

I can confirm this latter point personally.  If you buy from a third party via Amazon you are asked to rate the seller.  I have three times given a third party seller a bad rating and all three offered me something to change that rating.  The ratings in fact are now useless.

Unless of course you want to get something out of the supplier, by giving a good or bad review.  There’s a difference of opinion as to which one is most likely to bring a result quickly – I get the feeling that bad reviews will give you something more quickly than good, but there’s no scientific coverage of this.

But nothing stands still on the internet, and Cornell University is working on a program to detect fake reviewers.  I would imagine this is quite easy, as I have the job of removing fake commentaries on the Hamilton House blogs that we run (including our blogs in the world of football, which do get a lot of comments each day).   After a few days it is easy to spot the fakes – normally because they have no detail, because the writer simply has bought it, been there, used it, or whatever.

So it goes – the world moves on.

Analyses like this are just part of what we do for clients of our Velocity programme.  If you would like to know more please do have a look at www.velocity.ac or give us a call on 01536 399 000.

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