Why Even Bad Online Reviews Can Increase Sales
We're generally quite critical of companies that try to squelch negative online reviews, astroturf them, or just bribe customers for positive ones. Not only is this behavior bad for consumers, but the experience of one company shows that it's bad for businesses, too.
When the niche site AlpacaDirect.com (no, it doesn't sell live alpacas) began posting customer reviews, good and bad, for selected items on their site, they noticed something interesting starting to happen.
It was a risky move for the four-year-old company, based in Brentwood, Calif. Hobart was effectively paying to host bad press — such as posts by customers who described AlpacaDirect's golf cardigan as "kinda sweaty" and a "poor fit." Both awarded the cardigan three out of a possible five stars.
But a month after installing the PowerReviews service, Hobart saw sales climb 23% on items that had customer reviews (even that cardigan, which garnered an average of four stars).
"People are really researching their purchases," he says. "We knew our customers liked our products, and we wanted them to tell one another."
The company found that not only were customer reviews a valuable way for customers to interact with each other and discuss the products, but were also a venue for honest feedback that helped the company improve their products and the site.
And what, astroturfers, is wrong with that?
Even bad reviews boost sales [CNN Money]
(Photo: rockmixer)
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Comments:
I've been known to read negative reviews, decide that I either think the person is being cynical, has poor expectations or that the concern isn't something I care about.
Someone else might thing the sleeves on something are too long, but thats what would make it great for me. Plus, no opinion makes me more wary than mixed opinions.
I think those of us who read reviews tend to look more critically at why they thought they were bad. I'd put more stock in a review that says a camera was slow to boot up vs one where the customer gave it 1 star because the item didn't arrive in time for their wedding.
@TechnoDestructo: Agreed. I am always skeptical when there is something with only 5* ratings and no one who has any criticism.
Sometime, a company forget that people do think that if something seems to good to be true, it's probably is too good to be true. Hence, I'd pay cheap for an acceptable product, rather than for a product with suspiciously glowing review.
Kinda like in the KFC campaign: If all that negative press had not happened, I probably would have never know about the grilled chicken. For every couple pissed off people (who by now have probably forgotten about it), I'm sure at least one person was like "hey! they have grilled chicken?"
@TechnoDestructo: There are also reviews inbetween. Those are the best because someone isn't just ripping on a product or listing its glories. Those are the reviews that people are more likely to trust.
When I buy something on Amazon, I look at a few 1 star reviews, a few 3 star reviews, and a few 4 star reviews. The 1 star alert me to any major issues that people with the product might be experiencing. The 3 star allow me to see the product through someone who is cynical's eyes, and the 4 star lets me see why the product is really good for some people. Many times the 5 star reviews aren't as informative as the others.
As TechnoDestructo beat me to it:
Makes you look more honest and up front about it, and people can weigh in on the pros and the cons.
For instance, if I see a product with six 5 star ratings, and another with with 12 ratings for 4.5, I will most likely go with the second one, after reading the negative reviews.
Most likely, the negative reviews for a good product are of the following kind:
1. Serial Returner/Unhappy customer. "Overall a great product for its price, but I had to return it because the power button was too small."
2. One off manufacturing defect: "My computer never detected the hard disk even after several attempts. A 5 minute call to the support line determined that it was a manufacturing defect, and that they will replace it for free with free expedited shipping. But I decided to just go with *|ITS COMPETITOR|* and not bother with this *|CUSS WORD|* brand again."
3. Specific individual scenario: "I have an antique machine that simply will not talk to this thing. It works well with the newer machines (less than 10 years old) but I really need something that talks to my Windows 98 machine. So I have to return it. They should make it clear that it wont work with Win 98."
4. Some feature you probably could live without: "I am a very tall person, and this chair only sits 6 inches off the ground, which to me is very uncomfortable. The cushion is very soft though."
5. Obvious Troll: *|FACEBOOKER COMMENT|*
@CompyPaq: Ha! Thats exactly what I do. 5 starrers are mostly people who are just elated to have that thing work out of the box.
3 starrers are people with a genuine concern or two thrown in with a bunch of annoying cynics.
1 and 2 stars are usually dealbreaker things about lemons, defective pieces, and sales support.
4 starres are people happy with their purchase, but also know its limitations. They know what they are talking about.
I first look at the ratio though. if 1 and 2 stars are >15%, you probably dont want it.
If N(1+2) > 0.5 * N(4+5): Stay the eff away from it.
@MostlyHarmless: really depends on the 1 & 2 stars - I can't even count how many times when I was researching TVs the average rating would be knocked down 2 stars because of shipping.... and the reviews would say "FINE OTHER THAN JACKASS SHIPPING"
This reminds me of the book "Influence" by Robert Ciladini. (If you haven't read it pick it up I highly recomment it). It's all about social proof, i.e. people tend to instinctively 'follow the herd'. The fact that a product has reviews good or bad indicates people have bought it and used it, it gives an illusion to the next buyers that it is a popular product. Next to a product without any reviews it immediately becomes more attractive.
And who says making fun of yourself or the products you are selling is bad for sales? Look at woot!
I've actually laughed hard at a couple of product descriptions where they went out of their way to convince the visitors that it was actually a terrible terrible idea to buy this thing.
Earns you karma points, which you can then cash in to effect impulse buys at the woot offs.
@Megalomania: yeah, I was supposed to mention that. I see that the most often: "ORDERED IT ON FRIDAY. TOOK FOREVER TO SHIP, AND THEN IT WENT BACK BECAUSE I WAS NOT AT HOME. AND THEN THE BOX LOOKED DENTED. THANKFULLY NOTHING HAPPENED TO THE SERIAL CODE STICKER THEY WERE SHIPPING INSIDE THAT HUGE BOX."
Um....
1. You ordered on friday evening - no wonder it didnt ship till monday.
2. Yeah, fedex not delivering because you were not at home is not exactly the manufacturer's or the retailer's fault, you know.
This makes sense. When I buy from an e-tailer I've never heard of I always wonder if they have any other customers, and if their products even exist. Having reviews (even bad ones) tells me YES someone else did buy this product, and YES they did receive it.
Bad reviews are also the most helpful because I've usually decided in advance if I want said product. The bad reviews tell me what kind of problems I might expect with either the product or the company I'm purchasing from.
The review system on Amazon is so easily gamed that I generally ignore it and do my research about a product on other sites even if I'm planning to buy it on Amazon. Sometimes that outside research leads me to buying the product on the other site, simply because of their reviews.
@flyingember: Yep yep, with most Amazon purchases I check out a few of the 5 stars and then tread through the single stars to see what the biggest gripes were.
@MostlyHarmless: I find a lot of the really negative reviews are like you've said but there is a group you didn't mention are the ones where the person obviously doesn't know what they're doing. Especially with electronics.
@CompyPaq: Another thing is you have to wonder about some of the authenticity of products on Amazon, especially when they are being sold by a third party seller. If I don't know what the buyer received then I cannot make a judgement on the product.
I was looking for headphones the other day and based on the reviews and the fact that they were only available from a 3rd party seller you have to wonder if the people were receiving fakes and knockoff's without knowing it.
I wouldn't buy electronics from any 3rd party seller on there unless I was extremely familiar with what I was getting, but if they are sending out knockoff headphones half the people getting the knockoff's probably don't even know they are getting fakes. This then reflects poorly on the quality of a company's products.
@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: See this is how you do it:
6. Noob who has no idea what he is talking about: "I figured that if people can land on the moon, we could make computers out of paper. However the POS engineer (probably from india) kept on insisting that it only proves that other people can do other, unrelated things. Finally I had to bring everyone on the same page by returning the product, giving it one star, and firing the engineer."
@MostlyHarmless: I got that impression when I looked up what a Bag of Crap was. And I still wonder why you're obsessed with getting one.
The problem I see with Amazon is that you don't know what the 3rd party sellers are sending out, are they sending out the real product or a very close knockoff of it, so close that your average Amazon buyer will not know the difference. Its too easy to put up a picture of the real thing, buy some knockoffs from China and send them out as the real thing. For most items I would only trust Amazon in this respect and would avoid any items from third party sellers. You have to be very careful on there.
If a third party seller is sending out fakes then it also makes the manufacturer of the original product look bad because then the reviews don't take into consideration the original quality that the product was supposed to have.
Like when you shop for headphones, your average customer isn't going to be familiar with every package detail for the model they are buying, so it would be pretty easy to send out a knockoff pair and claim it is a pair of Sennheiser's even if it wasn't an exact fake.
@flyingember: Lots of times, for shoes or clothing, it will be a three-star review and say something like "runs a size too big; I had to exchange it", and then I just know to order a size smaller.
I find reviews the most helpful when choosing hotels. I take the negative reviews with a grain of salt. When a product or service gets mostly positive reviews (say 4 out 5), and only 1 or 2 zeroes, it's easy to dismiss those complaints as a statistical anomaly.
For the above case, MostlyHarmless summed it up best in that often times there's nothing wrong with the product or service in an overall sense. The issue the negative review has is often some specific gripe:
"I'm never staying at XYZ Hotel & Casino because it's such a long walk from the Strip." Well, that doesn't make it a bad hotel, it just means it's located where you'd like it to be.
@Quake 'n' Shake: I should qualify my "4 out of 5" statement. I meant rating a product on scale of 0 to 5.
@MostlyHarmless: It usually is the retailer's fault. Most areas, FedEx will leave a package without signature unless signature is required. There's also 2 levels of signature required... 1 where you can sign the door tag and they'll delivetr it the next day, and the other where the signature MUST be in person. I _hate_ it when retailers pick that second option, making things extremely inconvenient.
@Quake 'n' Shake: Yeah, when I see a negative review on a hotel room in NYC saying something like "The rooms are too small!", I dismiss that ... since many hotel rooms in NYC really are much smaller than elsewhere.
A *lack* of negative reviews should make a smart consumer wary -- it indicates that negative reviews are being scrubbed, and that typically means that there are a significant amount of really unhappy customers.
On smaller businesses it means the only people who have bothered to leave reviews have been the owners themselves.
I love how the post is entitled "why bad reviews boost sales" yet does not explain why bad reviews boost sales.
Better luck next time?
@strathmeyer: The title is
"Why Even Bad Online Reviews Can Increase Sales"
The word "even" implies a more verbose title such as:
"Why Online Reviews, Even Bad Ones, Can Increase Sales"
And the story does say why (albeit briefly) reviews, even the bad ones, increase sales -- people are researching products before purchasing them. Reviews (even bad ones) let people research and shop in the same place.
@strathmeyer: Actual customer reviews, which almost always will be partially negative, boost sales. Hardy surprising
I swear by two-star reviews. Any remotely popular product has some, and they usually point up authentic failures to meet expectations. One-star reviews, in my experience, are often beefs with delivery/return (Arrived too slow! Couldn't return!), statements which anyone doing their own research could judge for themselves (Overpriced! Doesn't conform to latest spec!), or weird, idiosyncratic issues which are not as big a deal to anyone other than the poster (This isn't mauve, it's FUSCHIA!).
One weird thing is, I've looked at a lot of consumer electronics, and it seems like every single product out there has died on someone within 30 days of purchase. No matter how reliable the brand name, or how foolproof the product, if it's got more than 40 or so reviews on Amazon or Newegg or wherever, it seems like one of them's a tale of woe about how it was dead on arrival, or worked twice and then stopped, or something.
@psm321: Well, except that most people would throw hissy fits if the fedex guy left their laptop on the doorstep and it got stolen or damaged. Minor inconvenience for an added level of insurance. I'd take it.
this makes sense. people are more likely to buy from an honest company. Any company that tries to take negative reviews and hide or censor them might have something to hide.
@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: It is more of a badge of honor. And yes, for 8 bucks, I would gamble once in a while ;)
Because I am getting _something_ for those 8 bucks. Though for the most part it will be something incredibly cheap that i do not need at all ;)
@jackbishop: This could probably happen regardless of where you buy the product, if you buy it in a store or online. The only good thing about having a product die within 30 days is likely either the manufacturer or Amazon or Newegg would back you up on that if you are shopping with them. If you bought the item on your credit card you might also have some extra protection there (probably a good idea to put items you think might break quickly on your credit card).
Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again.
@TechnoDestructo: Indeed. When I'm reading reviews I pay more attention to the negative ones. Everything has flaws and I just want to know how bad the bad part is. I'm inherently distrustful of glowing reviews that gush praise and don't have a single bad word for the product.
@TechnoDestructo: right, a review of 'kinda sweaty' might mean it's a perfect sweater for someone who lives with freezing temperatures for months out of the year
I also review the bad reviews, because sometimes the bad reviews are bad because of the incompetence of the reviewer, and not a defect of the product itself.
/also, what TechnoDestructo said. The bad review might focus on a feature that I don't care about, for example, I don't care how bad the camera on a cell phone sucks because IMO, all cell phone cameras suck.
@lordargent: especially some of the newegg reviews, where a customer gives it 1 star because they didn't adequately research the product, and/or didn't know that their laptop didn't have a slot for the PCI graphics card (or whatever the latest standard is... i haven't touched desktop hardware in 5 years)
@MostlyHarmless: I wonder if Consumerist would think it would be fair if perhaps before a customer left a review of an item, they had to sort what the review was about, (IE - are you unhappy with shipping? - are you unhappy with the quality of the item) etc and then sorted out the reviews to the areas they need to be, product reviews about the product, shipping reviews about shipping, and customer service about customer service.
Nothing I love more than, as Mostly Harmless put it, seeing a review that has nothing to do with the item, but they still felt the need to hammer the product.
"I TRIED TO INSTALL THIS WITH A HAMMER BECAUSE I DIDN"T ACTUALLY OWN A SCREWDRIVER AND IT BROKE> THIS COMPANY SUKS STAY AWAY PRODUKT IS CRAPPPPPP!!!"
@JCWhitless: Yeah but then you're still trusting the customer to properly sort the review into the proper category. They don't exactly have the best running history with reviewing "correctly," what makes you think they can categorize the review correctly. ;-)
A bad review can tell you if the down side to a product is something that you can live with or not. It also makes the company selling it look more honest.