What percentage of online reviews are legit?
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I have been reading some mattress reviews this morning, including some on our own website. A remarkable number of them do not sound "authentic" to my ears. It's something I have been thinking about for awhile - people come to the Internet to get information and that includes reviews from presumably "real people" who own that particular product. But I just wonder how may of these reviews are on the level? Many of the "slam reviews" sound just as fake as the "this mattress changed my life" reviews. My question is rhetorical, because it's simply impossible to know. And I don't have a solution to the problem, if online reviews really are as unreliable as I suspect they are. As consumers, we just have to make a personal judgment as to the credibility of each review, and not just count the positive reviews and the negative reviews. I read yesterday that 25 million mattresses are sold each year in the U.S. and that there are 537 domestic mattress manufacturers (1), with 4 accounting for more than 60% of them. That consumers have so few reliable sources of information is pretty scary. (1) I do not have a citation for this. Supposedly this is "according to the CPSC - U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, but I haven't been able to find it on their website. |
Re: What percentage of online reviews are legit?
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You can sort of pick out the fakes *and* fanatics by their language used, very broad sweeping statements, generally. I try to weed both of those out, when comparing products. That's a good point about freebies given reviewers, too, PC Mag raved about a company who we bought a computer from and they had ZERO customer service, then robbed us, by forcing us to pay for a sound system we never received. When reported to the credit card company (Amex) they lied and we ended up paying for it. Never used that card again, either, or bought another PC Mag. We also should keep in mind that people who are disgruntled with a product tend to leave more reviews than those happy campers who are too busy to go online and say something positive about their experiences. Another thing I found shocking is that even if a fraudulent reviewer is discovered, the users of that product will stick up for them, even if they aren't connected! That happened with some cosmetic lines in several areas on the internet. Get a life, girls. :) Also, some of those products are the "love them or hate them" kind and I figure Select Comfort and Temperpedic fit in that category. This message was modified Sep 18, 2007 by obxgal
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Re: What percentage of online reviews are legit?
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Well first of all I must say that large majorities of consumers rely on product reviews to help make online purchase decisions. But what percentage of those reviews are reliable and authentic? According to recent survey data found on the internet , 33 percent of consumers believe they saw “a lot” of fake local business reviews in 2018. Paid or fake reviews rampant on Amazon. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, a majority of reviews in certain Amazon product categories are fraudulent or paid. That is supported by a more recent analysis from a site called Fakespot, which analyzes and grades review content on Amazon. Amazon has taken steps various times in the past to crack down on fake or incentivized reviews. But this has obviously not solved the problem. The problem is particularly acute with Chinese sellers and manufacturers on Amazon. Unfortunately most reviews are fake and well, that just takes a lot of trust from a site such as amazon, and people don't know this and why would they? Amazon does really well at covering their tracks... |