It’s an accepted fact that we are living in the
era of information. More than ever, people have instant access to knowledge
that can help them make decisions in their everyday lives. People are
using their smartphones, computers, and other devices to make informed choices
about their medical care, their political views, and how to spend their money.
And it has never been easier to spend money thanks to the convenience of
shopping online. Open access to information about products and services
means we now have endless choices to consider. So how do people figure
out the best way to get the most for their money? Even with all this new
technology, people still rely on an old-school method: recommendations
and reviews.
There are so many services and websites that
provide us with consumer reviews. This should make the process of
selecting the best products and services easier but somehow things are still
just as complicated! There are two ways most of us look at reviews
online: separate review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor OR the reviews sections
of websites that directly sell products like Amazon.com. Products and
services that are well reviewed generally jump to the top of any results list.
But it seems businesses have responded to these attempts to empower the
consumer with fake reviews. Supposedly, individual users of sites like
Amazon.com are meant to buy a product, use it, and then rate or review it with
feedback for other individual users to contemplate when making their own
purchasing decisions.
So how does a company that sells products on a
site like Amazon get individuals to write bogus reviews? By offering
incentives, of course! Some companies have set up Facebook groups to
recruit potential reviewers by offering full refunds on the product they were
selling if the reviewer provided a high number of stars and a glowing review.
This ensures the product will appear at the top of search results,
creating the illusion of goodness rather than revealing an accurate assessment
of it.
Of course, the idea of sending out free product
in hopes of good reviews is not a new marketing strategy. Business have
done this for years. The difference now is where vendors previously hoped
that the free things would sway people’s recommendations, companies now require
an explicit exchange to occur in order to secure a good rating for their
product: you get this thing for free if, and ONLY if, you write a good
review for us.
YouTube is another treasure trove of reviews
that would appear helpful since videos allow potential buyers to see a product
in action. The comment section of review videos can also aid consumers
suss out potential problems. But brands have discovered a way to take
incentives a bit further than just providing free products to content creators.
Many brands now sponsor lavish trips to exotic destinations and invite
select “influencers” that reflect their key demographic to participate when new
products are launched. I imagine it’s pretty tough to film a negative
review of a product from a brand that has just sent you on a fre trip to
Tahiti, a reason many YouTubers cite when they simply opt NOT to talk about a
product on their channels at all instead giving it an honest, critical review.
In reality, many content creators are not able to monetize their channels or
other social media platforms and thus depend on free products to keep their
reviews going.
The tension between free products from brands
and honest reviews puts consumers in the middle. Now that the holiday
season is kicking off, more and more people are shopping online. This
past Black Friday and Cyber Monday seemed especially focused on online deals,
with some starting the weekend before Thanksgiving and others extending to the
week after. Clearly, with our busy lives and holiday seasons, we are
drawn to the convenience of shopping via the Internet. But if we aren’t able to
examine the quality of the goods we’re purchasing or make any kind of assessment
until they arrive in packages at our houses, we have to use reviews smartly to
our advantage. Using a few basic techniques and some common sense will
help you spot a product with many fake or biased reviews.
First, it helps to read a bunch of positive
reviews for a product. Notice the language. Do reviewers use the
same key phrases or words to describe the product? If so, that can be a sign
that the brand has provided reviewers with preferred talking points to include.
Secondly, look at how specific or detailed people are in their review.
The generic phrase “This product is great” doesn't really help anyone
decide if the product is a good fit. If a review can point a few
different things that made this product worthwhile or call out a few small drawbacks,
it’s more likely the review is genuine.
It also helps to know when a product came on the
market. If it’s just been released and there are many glowing reviews, it
can be a sign that the vendor solicited biased opinions that aren’t accurate or
helpful. Finally, and this is for the truly detail oriented folks, if you start
to notice the same usernames providing positive reviews for multiple products
in a short period of time, you can generally conclude that reviewer might have
been swayed by the promise of free stuff.
Online shopping is one of the miracles of our
current technological age. Theoretically, we should be able to save
time and money by engaging in a very targeted consumer experience rather
than traditional browsing. Through online reviews, we also have access to
the best consumer resource out there: other people’s experiences.
But even though technology has helped us spend more money than before, in
order to spend it wisely, we still must evaluate our information in ways librarians
have been recommending for years: consider your sources carefully and
verify the facts before you decide to hit that “Place Order” button.
