Mattress Forum

What percentage of online reviews are legit?
Sep 14, 2007 11:18 AM
haysdb
Foam Nerd
Location: USA
Joined: Aug 30, 2007
Points: 605
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.
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