Positive Reviews Leads to Higher Sales New study investigates online reviews - makes surprising discoveries Online product reviews are a huge part of our lives these days, and often, theyre the nearest thing we get to a hands on experience before we buy something. Extremely positive or negative reviews can greatly alter the perception of a product in the mind of an undecided customer. So how do we know that the reviews were reading are honest? The authors of an MIT study entitled Deceptive Reviews: The Influential Tail have looked at several sites which feature customer reviews, including Amazon, but focused on an unnamed private label apparel retailer. Crucially, this unnamed retailer does not link reviews to a purchase of that item - i.e., you can write a review of something even if you didnt buy it. What they found is that approximately 5% of the product reviews are written by customers for whom there is no record they have purchased the item. These reviews are significantly more negative on average than the other 95% of the reviews for which there is a record that the customer previously purchased the item. Its no surprise that positive reviews lead to higher sales, but according to the study, negative reviews have a much more profound negative effect.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 07:06:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015