Why do people write reviews?
12th March 2009, 09:51 am by Matt Rhodes
In the latest Technology Quarterly in this week’s edition of the Economist, there is an article about reviews online. This piece explores well why people read and trust reviews, and the value of both positive and negative reviews. John McAteer, Google’s retail industry director is quoted as saying:
No one trusts all positive reviews
For him you need some negative reviews as well as everybody knows that no product could per perfect. And this is certainly true. In fact, negative reviews can help people decide if a product might be for them, especially if they don’t associate themselves with the negative reviewer (“it wasn’t for them, but it might be for me”).
The article also looks at the value of having multiple reviews and cites a great experiment conducted by Bazaarvoice showing how products with more than ten reviews saw “drastically” higher conversion rate both for the products actually reviewed and for other products from the same brand.
So the value of reviews to brands and customers is clear. What is explored in less depth in the article is why people would write reviews in the first place. The example of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Amazon is cited, which has over 3,200 reviews. Why, the article asks, would people continue to write reviews? They quote Clay Shirky in response to this:
Mr Shirky suggests that in many cases, writing a review is more like writing fan mail (or hate mail) for a product, and the people who post them do not really expect it to be read.
I think this issue needs to be explored in more depth. There are a number of reasons people might write a review:
- They are paid to do so (as per the recent case of Belkin hiring people to rate their products five star)
- They are forced to do so in order to gain some other incentive (TopTable requires you to rate restaurants you have been to in order to gain points for their loyalty scheme)
- They write reviews to increase their standing in a community (where, perhaps more reviews give them more credibility or access to more features in the online community)
- They write reviews because they want to look good / impressive / intelligent amongst their peers
- They write reviews because they had benefit from some and they want others to benefit in the same way from their advice
- They write reviews because they have something to say
I am sure there are examples of all six out there – from people gaining financially or socially from the review, through people wanting to share their knowledge, to people just wanting to air their opinion (whether or not people read). But, I suspect people write reviews more for the reasons at the bottom of the list than at the top. And it is certain that the reasons nearer the bottom of the list lead to more genuine reviews.
Why do people write reviews? Well most likely because they are given the opportunity to voice their opinion. They want want to help others or may just have something to say. But once we give them the chance of doing so they will. That’s one of the real benefits of social media. It encourages us all to share our thoughts and opinions and then gives us other tools so we can sort these and only the most interesting or relevant rise to the top. Give people the chance to write a review and many will do just for the chance to air their views. Show the benefit they can get from reviews and even more will write their own. Allow voting on reviews or promotion of good reviews and you will get a higher quality of comments in return.
In social media people model behaviour. They want to express themselves and if you give them the tools and permission to do so, and you show them how to express themselves then they will do. You really don’t need to pay or incentivise them, in fact this can generate a lot of much lower quality reviews. What you do need to do is understand your customers, why they might want to review and how. Then offer them the ability to do what they want to do anyway.
Reviews are useful. They increase conversion, time spent on site and have a positive halo effect for other, associated, products. And people want to write the reviews in the first place. You just need to get the social architecture right so they feel they can.
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Some more reading
- Do You Trust User Reviews on the Web? (technologizer.com)
- Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges (technologizer.com)
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Rob Bois:
It’s funny, as a former industry analyst, my job was essentially to write reviews about products and strategies in the enterprise software industry. So I certainly have the capacity for writing reviews, and one might even expect I also have the mentality. But I don’t think I have ever in my life written a single product review. I rely on them heavily when making consumer decisions, yet I never contribute. I do feel a slight bit of guilt about this, but in the end, I just rarely think to go back after the fact and write down the results of my experience with a product. Even if I were offered some kind of status, compensation, or credit toward some status, I doubt it would be enough of a nudge. I have always wondered who is writing all these reviews as well, and now am wondering if the best reviewers or the real unbiased consumers remain largely unheard.
12 March 2009, 12:49 pmTom Vanlerberghe:
I love the power of reviews, especially when you have to buy something above average spending it’s great to rely on other information than what the company provided.
However, if you’re in a customer sensitive business there’s a reflex of monitoring reviews. People tend to write negative reviews with more ease, and more eloquence, than positive reviews. But monitoring is not the way, I know that. Still, it’s hard to figure out how you can get/use reviews. If you delete the really bad ones and keep the average ones, than the way your product is perceived is based upon those average reviews, and that’s just why you deleted the negative ones…
I would love to use reviews and let them go… but I just know that in my business and with technology as it is, it wouldn’t be a competetive advantage.
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13 March 2009, 3:00 pmRichard Millington:
A really interesting post. I think there’s a different way of thinking about this though.
Aside from paid reviews, people write reviews for just one reason, the way it makes them feel when they hit the send button.
They might feel that posting a negative review was a satisfactory act of revenge against the product/wasted money. Or they might feel they are being perceived as clever by others etc…
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19 March 2009, 10:26 amGlenn Fleishman:
I’m the non-bylined author of The Economist piece, and this is a terrific extension. As you can imagine, with a certain amount of attention (not necessarily a word limit) that can be spent on a topic in the magazine, I carved out a particular part of this larger subject. But I’m interested in your list of reasons of why people post reviews.
My father (who suggested the article idea to me, which I then pitched to my editor) continues to be amazed at news sites in which people essentially spew comments into the void. On some local news sites, you might get a dialog among a few dozen people. But on some news articles, you get hundreds or thousands of comments, which no one writing the article nor other commenters can possibly read.
1 April 2009, 7:48 pmMatt Rhodes:
Hi Glenn,
Thanks for your comment (and sorry I’m only just getting round to responding). Thanks also for getting this piece in the Economist – why people write reviews and the benefit (to consumers and to the brands themselves) of these reviews is a topic worthy of some investigation. I think many people would understand your father’s reaction to comments and reviews, but the financial benefit to brands of having reviews on their site is clear.
The internet is changing consumer behaviour – the more time we spend looking at this and starting to understand this, the better.
Matt
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23 May 2009, 11:25 pmJohn:
Great article Matt! This is a great details about how people choose to write a review. I am the webmaster of a doctor review site and we have tried all the items on list to get user to write a review. We are sure everyone has seen a doctor one time or the other but most people rather just read but not write one unless they see someone else does it already which result in a very low rate of review now.
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16 August 2009, 10:11 pmMurray:
A view from an online reviewer of some five years’ experience: I enirely endorse the remarks above about ‘social architecture’. The right type must be in place, and it is up to the website selling the material that is being reviewed that mechanisms preventing abuse are in place. In the case of some major retailer (who I won’t name) I am not so sure. I have evidence of cases of negative/collusive voting by malicious posters which are evidently designed to destroy the reputation of the reviewer, taking advanatge of anonymity to go about their business. It has become particularly worse in the last tyhree weeks or so. Fromk the little I know about online civil rights, I feel that retailers have a duty of care towards reviewers to protect them.
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21 December 2010, 2:18 amStephen:
I read reviews everyday, it’s kind of my job.. Yet I’m still confused at why some people write the things they do.
Some people write volumes about a company’s customer service while saying nothing about a product, some people write things like “this sucks” and leave it at that, some reviews are obviously jokes (like saying they put a 80″ TV in their bathroom).. Maybe in the end, it is that reviews are a way to voice yourself, and seeing your words on a screen is in a way fulfilling. But yes, it’s a mysterious phenomenon. Thanks for the post!
5 January 2011, 7:43 pmRichard Hollberg:
Great article. Waiting for more.
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11 January 2012, 7:48 pm