There are lots of reasons why shopping over the internet is great (and one big reason why it is not - grrrrr UPS). One feature I particularly like is customer reviews. It’s something I really miss when shopping in person. I like knowing how certain products are working for the customers that purchased them. I know that it’s not a perfect measure of how much I will like something, but it’s a decent start. When a product has a good number of reviews, the vast majority of which are positive, I feel pretty good about my purchase. The problem is that retailers and manufacturers know that people like customer reviews, so what do they do? They rig them. The most obvious offenders are often on sites like amazon.com. Many of the customer reviews are paragraphs long praising every minute feature of an item. As if I am supposed to believe that some regular customer took the time to write up such a detailed and sophisticated review just for fun. If you really want to say more about your product then put it in the product description. The customer review section is for actual customers and it shouldn’t count it you gave the product to select customers so that they would write up “impartial reviews”. There is a time and place for that kind of paid market research. Use it to inform your own company; not to sway consumers.
Customer reviews on websites must be unsolicited and unbiased.
In other words, you can’t ask someone to write a review for your product because that would be solicitation and you can’t write one yourself because that would be biased. Consider customer reviews to be free market research. Instead of manipulating these reviews, read them and see what you can do to improve your product.
As always I remain your all-powerful and benevolent Queen of the World,
Marisa
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