I am back and I figured I would begin by focusing on an old series I had not updated in awhile: Why Reviews are Garbage – Part 1 of N. Since I initially began the process of outlining how this topic (Reviews being Garbage), I had a good friend visit me to do a writers workshop. During that visit, we took the time to “spiritually” debate some topics. Now, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I debate like an asshole. Since I had begun the preparation for this series before he had arrived, but we somehow got to the topic of reviews, and I began utilizing my research as part of our discussion. The reason I am beginning with this little story is to show that these arguments have been tested in a whimsical three hour debate. One of the first pieces we discussed was the concept of a corporation buying reviews. [Click “Read More” for 1800 words of critical analysis]
What, you don’t believe a corporation would buy reviews? Corporations are altruistic and super nice and great? First, they aren’t, second they don’t have feelings (because they are an artificial human for legal purposes), and third their goal is to make money for their stockholders. As such, they are only altruistic when it is in their best interest. Why go green? Because it is cheaper in the long run. A building powered by solar panels for 20 years costs less money than staying on the grid as electrical costs continue to trend up. These decisions are often made to save money which increases the profits for the stockholders. But, I am going on a tangent about corporations as a whole. The point is simple, a corporation doesn’t have feelings and is motivated by money (which isn’t an inherently bad or good thing, just a thing). Because making money is their thing, you can safely assume corporations know that people buy products by looking at reviews.
Now, I am not saying that a business will pay a third party seller X dollars to get Y reviews (this probably happens on some websites), but we can assume the big ones aren’t doing this because that would lead to a huge scandal and could ruin a business. Not just the maker of the product, but also for the merchant who is trying to sell the product. If it came out today that Apple paid Amazon to maintain a 5 star review artificially, we would no longer trust Apple or Amazon – so it is likely they don’t behave in this manner of direct purchase. This means companies cannot directly pay for reviews. So you can be happy; the larger websites aren’t doctoring any reviews! Now be you can sad, they are probably not removing reviews from questionable places!
See, a company will pay a marketing firm to make sure their product sells. This creates an air of plausible deniability and means there is zero direct communication between the seller and manufacturer on reviews. Those marketing firms will go out, buy a bunch of a product, and then review it as if they are normal human beings. Now, you may be gearing up to counter me with: “I don’t look at the 5 star reviews, I look at the lowest reviews”. If that’s your response, then you would be in parity with most of humanity. It is common knowledge that the average buyer will go check the worst reviews before actually buying a product. Because of that, most marketing firms know they need to “stack” the low reviews with meaningless garbage. For example:
- Blame it on something else:
- “Shipping was shit, box came all damaged. Very unprofessional.”
- “Never got my product, went to my neighbor, customer service was difficult. Got a new one, products great but customer service was a nightmare.”
- “Got charged tax, what the hell, I didn’t know tax was included. I bought this online and waited for the shipping because I wanted to avoid taxes. Never buying online again from this website. Tax free or bust.”
- Low rating because of external factors/unsupported functionality:
- “My dog pissed on it and the thing stopped working. Really should have made it pee proof so my dog peeing on it wouldn’t have done anything.”
- “Dog hated the vacuum. Can’t use it because the dog gets scared and then pees on the floor.”
- “Dog sabotaged the vacuum by pooing in front of it. After cleaning shit out of the robot-vacuum-extrodinare, I am going to be throwing it out. Stopped working after turd number 3. Really should have tested this product with pet owners to see if they could make it tamper proof. No refund, bullshit.”
- Make the reviewer look like an idiot:
- Random rage with zero actual review: “Vacuum sucks”
- My personal favorite: “YELLING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE FUCK THIS THING AND MY UNREASONABLE EXPECTATIONS”
- Miss spellings: “Wat a dum stepid tolet pushr cnt bliev bught t…”
Mix those three above, and people will begin to ignore the lower ratings. By stacking the lowest rating section with as many reviews as possible where the product isn’t the problem but the surrounding aspects are, a person check other sections or just buy it. Now it is important to note that the overall score must be decently high to grab someone’s attention to check the reviews in the first place. As such, and since you are stacking the deck with shitty 1 star reviews, the goal would be to balance out the ratings at around 4 stars. So for each shitty rating, even if it is fake, they will need to add more credibility at the top. Therefore, as the customer reads the 1 star reviews and realizes they aren’t actual reviews, they will check out the higher level reviews to see if those are more telling.
But, as most people would state, they don’t read the five star reviews. This means, the marketing firm should focus on a blend of 3/4/5 star reviews. The goal, to hit a critical mass where true 1 star reviews mean nothing and won’t cannot unseat that magical 4 star rating (no one wants a 5 star rating because it is an unrealistic expectation). Most of us know nothing is perfect, so we tend to play in the 3 star and up category. But that raw star rating doesn’t matter. We, as consumers, augment the actual star review by looking at the spread of ratings and the amount of reviewers (something that is 4 stars with 10 reviewers isn’t going to matter as much as something with 3.7 stars and 2,000 reviewers). So by spreading out reviews across multiple star ratings, the marketing firm is increasing the amount of reviews for a single product and shifts the weight of the overall review towards a higher number in general.
So now, let’s assume that you don’t actually review a product by looking at the worst ratings but pull a sample size. In this scenario, let’s assume you look across all levels of reviews, only reviews with verified purchasers, and also those that have been marked helpful by other people. This is some great criteria for choosing which reviews are meaningful! Wrong… if someone has paid a marketing firm and that firm decides to manipulate the reviews, they will have purchased the product. If you don’t think GE’s budget for marketing allows them to buy 100 washers and dryers from Amazon, then you don’t realize that GE’s revenue is more than most countries.
Therefore, let’s assume if you are able to pay a marketing firm to manage the marketing for your products, you also put enough in the budget that the marketing firm can by X of the product. I say X because depending on the product the amount could change. Look at a 10 dollar item, those have 1,000s of reviews, while a larger ticket item may only have 20 reviews. You need to match your competitors or it could look suspicious. So right then and there, the company can buy their own product back from the third party marketplace and become a verified buyer. As a verified buyer, you have a super power where everyone trusts you way more than all those other schlub reviews. So with the gold stamp, you start writing up some serious posts and focus on some key points:
- Make sure the post is elegant and properly structure to lend an air of credibility:
- Use proper grammar
- Create a little lead in story about your family
- Multiple paragraphs explaining each reason why you chose that star rating
- Boost the brand by talking about previous products being the reason you bought this one
- Durability
- Customer service
- Different brand specific things that made you have to buy a second one from that specific company
- Be very critical
- Nit pick little things
- Real problems that are not going to impact that actual use of the machine
- Not real problems like a scuff mark that made you sad cause you bought new so it would be shiny
- Usability pieces that you would have liked
- Button being closer to the handle
- Left handed mode because you are left handed (throw in an aside that no one makes a left handed model)
- Discuss the whole process and experience
- Don’t just review the product
- Nit pick little things
- Comeback and raise the star rating later because of durability or something improved
- Make it personal
When the above is done properly, the buyer is putty. By believing that someone let you into their “life”, you are going to be more subjective, you will bond with them because “OMG I have a cat too”. With this personal connection, the reviewer leverages a highly critical eye with a lot of nitpicking and you suddenly believe they did a thorough inspection of the product. Finally, the marketing firm leverages their other accounts to boost their best reviews so it becomes the first thing anyone sees. Throw a some middle of the road ratings on these hyper polished reviews and they just made 1,000 sales. We all like to believe we are objective but we aren’t. We trust someone who feels like a person to us, and because of that, a personal story with specifics will always win. In the end, a great fake a review is successful when it points out a true problems with a product but makes sure the problems are truly meaningless (wish the button was closer to the handle so I didn’t have to bend over to start it). This justifies the lower rating in your head, but actually doesn’t make the product seem bad. You buy it because these aren’t “real” problems and the reviewer was just being too aggressive.
So, the outcome of this conversation is simple:
- Companies have a lot of money, they can buy their own products
- They are aware of how you choose products online, they are gaming that system
- Middle of the road reviews or low level reviews are probably doctored in some way (no need to fake 5 star reviews because those are already 5 stars)
- Good grammar, a good story, and nit picking the little things will make a review seem credible
- Credible reviews can be boosted by the company
- Boosting the marketing firms own reviews
- Or boosting a regular people’s reviews who made the product look good
- Reviews don’t mean shit anyway, so this is all negligible
As I continue down this road, I will eventually explain why even a credible review means shit (later installment about personas). For now, realize that the reviews you are reading are probably lies or are boosted in someway because they make the company/product look amazing. In the end, any company that has the money to doctor reviews also has the money to release a quality product. So, odds are, even if trust the reviews the product will be just fine and work great. Lastly, shot out to Aaron for battling with me and giving me the counterpoints to put this full piece together, love you man.
Until next time,
~Theodore