[[{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article","articleBody":"We know online product reviews are crucial to products being sold \u2013 but is customer trust in reviews being eroded by nefarious sellers gaming product review systems with fake product reviews?\nUnfortunately, a great deal of signs point to \u201cyes.\u201d\nThere are many occasions where we rely on reviews to help us distinguish between products or services \u2013 especially when there are a multitude of choices.\nI recently bought a digital thermometer on Amazon, where there was a plethora of hundreds of devices, so I \u2013 like many of you reading this have likely done \u2013 relied on the reviews to help me make the decision. However, upon purchasing it, each time it was used, I\u2019d get completely random results \u2013 making clear that the device wasn\u2019t nearly as reliable as the reviews had led me to believe.\nA few days later, I received the typical email from Amazon, asking me to review the product, so I posted an accurate and honest negative review. I often review my Amazon purchases, as I know that I tend to rely on them myself when buying from the website. Like many customers, I tend to review the items I really like and those that I really don\u2019t.\nWhat happened next was quite an eye opener into the world of Amazon product reviews.\nTruth hurts: We\u2019d love your feedback. Wait. Not *that* kind of feedback. Over the following few weeks after posting my online product review, experience, and feedback of the item, many emails from different addresses began arriving in my inbox, all offering money if I\u2019d remove the negative review. They even provided a link with instructions on how to do it.\nDespite me replying and stating that I was unwilling to change my honest product review, the emails continued. It only stopped once I reported it to Amazon, who, to their credit, took it quite seriously. This got me thinking about the process of online reviews:\nIf this has happened to me, how many other people are tempted by the offer of money, and go ahead and remove a negative online product review?\nWhat about the positive reviews \u2013 do Amazon sellers pay people to post them?\nDo sellers pay people to leave negative product reviews for the products of their competitors?\nCan we even really trust reviews at all?\nCountless studies have shown that user-generated reviews can have a big impact on your conversion rates, although, admittedly, many of these studies have been published by companies that sell review management services.\nIt completely stands to reason that user-generated reviews can be very powerful tools in influencing a buying decision; especially with something technical or expensive like a new TV or a holiday vacation.\nI\u2019d expect that almost everyone reading this post has viewed Amazon, Yelp, or TripAdvisor reviews at some point, and that these have influenced the buying decisions that were made.\nWith a vast array of marketplaces flooded with different product options \u2013 most at a similar price points \u2013 reviews can be the key differentiator when it comes to clicking \u201cbuy.\u201d But is the race to win on reviews damaging the trust customers have in them, and will this, ultimately, dilute the importance and the impact of online product reviews, and their conversion rates?\n \nYou can lose a customer in a moment. So how do you build trust for a lifetime?\n Customers can be won - or lost - in an instant. Learn how to forge the bonds needed to survive the rocky moments that happen in any relationship. \nGaming the system: Bulk-buying online product reviews is a massive risk for brands\nA recent investigation and report by Which? detailed exactly how easy it is for Amazon sellers to buy verified reviews in bulk. Just a simple Google search finds a number of companies offering a review generation service. They use techniques to get around the Amazon guidelines and to ensure that the reviews appear to be genuine.\nMost of the time the process involves providing your product to reviewers for free or at a discounted rate but, for an additional fee, some services will guarantee that your product is returned once the review is submitted. As well as product reviews on marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart, sellers can also purchase seller feedback, and even votes to push positive reviews up.\nThe prices for these services start from around $10 per review, but can be much higher for certain categories of products \u2013 this further highlights both how valuable genuine-looking reviews can be, and the dangers for brands if companies can pay money for bad reviews.\n \nCustomer trust: A true definition, value, and 5 tips to earn it\n To compete, you need to deliver outstanding experiences. To do that, you need valuable customer data. And to get that, customers need to trust you. \nDigging into the dark world of paid online product reviews\nDuring their study, the Which? researchers posed as an Amazon seller to speak to AMZTigers, a company based in Germany, which claims to have over 60,000 reviewers worldwide to gain an understanding of what their service offers. As well as offering to generate product reviews, the AMZTigers account manager claimed that they can even help a seller gain \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status within 2 weeks.\nThis is a BIG consideration, as the Amazon Choice label is another crucial differentiator for marketplace sellers, and it can possibly give the impression that the product is endorsed by Amazon. While Amazon won\u2019t say exactly how an item is awarded \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status, it has said that the item has to be highly rated, well-priced, and available to ship immediately.\nThe fact that sellers are willing to pay large sums of money and give away free products in exchange for positive reviews is a good indication of how powerful positive reviews are.\nIf this weren\u2019t the case, companies like AMZTigers would not exist.\n \nHow to win customer trust: 5 strategies to earn loyalty\n Customer trust is at the center of everything. Follow these five principles to understand, build, and maintain customer trust. \nAmazon\u2019s review policies\nAmazon has strict policies aimed at protecting the integrity of reviews. They claim to analyse over 10 million reviews every week and to regularly ban, suspend, or even take legal action against those that violate their policies.\nIn my own case, as soon as I reported the seller to Amazon, the emails offering to pay me to remove the negative review immediately stopped, so I\u2019m assuming that Amazon did something about it \u2013 although the product is still for sale on Amazon from the same seller.\nBut is Amazon doing enough? Are they protecting the buyers they rely upon?\nCompanies offering these services can be easily found on search engines so it is hardly a clandestine underground service. I suspect many of us have previously read reviews for an Amazon product that are clearly for a different product or just don\u2019t appear real to know that Amazon\u2019s policies are not preventing this issue from happening. While the problem is not entirely limited to Amazon, it is one of the biggest marketplaces in the world so deserves a lot of scrutiny.\nHow to spot fake online product reviews\u00a0\nSo, how can users trust reviews they see on websites like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart? We know that reviews can have a high impact on a user\u2019s purchase decision, so when a merchant has gamed the system and generated a lot of suspect reviews, the customer is the one that loses out.\nThe key to weeding out suspect reviews is learning how to recognise reviews that are likely to be fake. Red flags include:\nProducts that have a lot of very recent positive reviews\nProducts that have a large number of reviews with photos attached (how many people really do that?)\nOverly detailed reviews for products that really don\u2019t deserve or need such a write up\nReviews stating that the reviewer was given the product free of charge\nReviews that are clearly for a different but related product; this is known as review merging\nAnother option for finding fake product reviews is to use online tools like Fakespot or ReviewMeta. These are both very powerful and actionable tools using multiple algorithms to analyse fake online product reviews.\nIn doing so, both provide users with an overall score for the accuracy and reliability of the product reviews, as well as providing more detailed insights into the patterns that they\u2019ve discovered.\nThey can even provide an adjusted review rating, which often remove approximately 1 star from the rating. The tools look for patterns which indicate suspect reviews without the user having to trawl through thousands of other online reviews.\nSome of these tools even provide a browser plugin that overlay the review score on the Amazon product listing and display pages, which can be extremely useful. While these tools will not be foolproof, the score and insights they provide should be taken into consideration when making a purchase decision.\n The Fakespot Chrome plugin altering the review score from 4.5 to 3.5 on Amazon.\n \n\u00a0\n Detailed analysis provided by Fakespot for reviews of a product on Amazon.\n \nThe very fact that these tools exist illustrates that there\u2019s a widespread issue with sellers gaming online product reviews.\n \nHow to boost online conversion: Listen to your customers\n Product reviews can provide a better understanding of improvements that could be made to a retailer\u2019s product offering \u2013 whether that's the assortment of products or how they\u2019re described. The review\/feedback mechanism also helps build a resource of online content about a retailer\u2019s assortment and the customer experience that future consumers can digest \u2013 and could influence their purchasing decision. \nThe future of online reviews\nSo will mistrust in reviews start to erode their value and will customers stop using them as part of their purchase decisions? Without action, I think the answer is simple and resounding: Yes.\nWhile this is unlikely to be a sudden change, the slow erosion in trust will continue to lessen the impact that reviews have on conversion rates and their value.\nTrust is such an important aspect in customer experience. It takes a long time to gain and a short time to lose.\nPerversely, as the value of gaming the system reduces, sellers will be less likely to pay money to obtain fake positive reviews, and therefore they may become more trustworthy again \u2013 but this would be hard to predict.\nUltimately, the solution is for the marketplace platforms to do much more to prevent this happening. I don\u2019t believe that my experience regarding my recent online review was unique. The fact that companies like AMZTigers, Fakespot, and ReviewMeta even exist and openly advertise their services tells us that a massive problem lurks below.\nAs trust in marketplace reviews diminishes, this will have a knock-on impact on consumer trust in the marketplace itself. If I can\u2019t trust reviews on Amazon, I am less likely to buy from them \u2013 so resolving this issue isn\u2019t just the right thing to do, but it will also have a long-term commercial impact, as trust is ultimately at the heart of any product or brand thriving.\nMarketplaces should dedicate more resources to preventing the gaming of their review programmes, as well as making the consequences for breaching the terms more severe. In my case, the seller clearly and brazenly breached the terms, but is still selling the same product on the platform.\nOnly when the cost and consequences of gaming the system outweigh the benefits will sellers stop.\nIf you\u2019re not reaching customers on their preferred channels, you\u2019re not reaching customers. Think bigger. Think better. We can help. Find out how HERE.","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_Person","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_Person_ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Branwell-Moffat-e1497890164339-150x150.jpg"},"name":"Branwell Moffat","sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/branwellm?lang=en","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/branwellmoffat\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/branwell-moffat\/"},"dateModified":"2021-09-07T11:58:43+00:00","datePublished":"2021-05-18T05:03:05+00:00","description":"Learn how to spot fake online product reviews and report them. This deep dive into the dark world of paid product reviews will astonish you.","headline":"How to spot fake online product reviews: The dark side of e-commerce","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_ImageObject","height":"630","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/online-product-reviews-FCEE-1200x630.jpeg","width":"1200"},"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/","name":"How to spot fake online product reviews: The dark side of e-commerce","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/","additionalType":"https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q1193236","description":"Relevant, timely information & analysis on commerce trends, both consumer-facing and B2B.","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/themes\/hybris_foc\/assets\/images\/layout\/logo-new-2x.png?_=1","height":"96","url":"https:\/\/23x6xj3o92m9361dbu2ij362-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/themes\/hybris_foc\/assets\/images\/layout\/logo-new-2x.png?_=1","width":"500"},"name":"The Future of Customer Engagement and Experience","sameAs":["https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/a-call-for-a-better-experience\/id1479742201","https:\/\/twitter.com\/FutureOfCEC","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/groups\/4844282","https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/feed\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/"},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article"},{"@type":["Article"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article","@context":{"@vocab":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","kg":"http:\/\/g.co\/kg"},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/","publisher":[{"@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/"}],"author":[{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_author_Person","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_author_Person_image_ImageObject","url":"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 1 1'%3E%3C\/svg%3E"}],"sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/branwellm?lang=en","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/branwellmoffat\/\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/branwellm?lang=en"],"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/branwell-moffat\/","name":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/branwell-moffat\/"}],"subjectOf":[{"@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_subjectOf_FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity0","name":"Truth hurts: We\u2019d love your feedback. Wait. Not *that* kind of feedback.","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity0_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"Despite me replying and stating that I was unwilling to change my honest product review, the emails continued. It only stopped once I reported it to Amazon, who, to their credit, took it quite seriously.\n
  • If this has happened to me<\/strong>, how many other people are tempted by the offer of money, and go ahead and remove a negative online product review<\/a>?<\/li>\n
  • What about the positive reviews<\/strong> \u2013 do Amazon sellers pay people to post them?<\/li>\n
  • Do sellers pay people<\/strong> to leave negative product reviews for the products of their competitors?<\/li>\n
  • Can we even<\/strong> really trust reviews at all?<\/li>\nCountless studies have shown that user-generated reviews can have a big impact on your conversion rates, although, admittedly, many of these studies have been published by companies that sell review management services.<\/span><\/strong><\/span>It completely stands to reason that user-generated reviews<\/a> can be very powerful tools in influencing a buying decision; especially with something technical or expensive like a new TV or a holiday vacation.I\u2019d expect that almost everyone reading this post has viewed Amazon, Yelp, or TripAdvisor reviews at some point, and that these have influenced the buying decisions that were made<\/a>.With a vast array of marketplaces flooded with different product options \u2013 most at a similar price points \u2013 reviews can be the key differentiator when it comes to clicking \u201cbuy.\u201d But is the race to win on reviews damaging the trust customers have in them, and will this, ultimately, dilute the importance and the impact of online product reviews, and their conversion rates?"}]},{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity1","name":"Gaming the system: Bulk-buying online product reviews is a massive risk for brands","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity1_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"A recent investigation and report by Which<\/a>? detailed exactly how easy it is for Amazon sellers to buy verified reviews in bulk. Just a simple Google search<\/a> finds a number of companies offering a review generation service. They use techniques to get around the Amazon guidelines and to ensure that the reviews appear to be genuine.Most of the time the process involves providing your product to reviewers for free or at a discounted rate but, for an additional fee, some services will guarantee that your product is returned once the review is submitted. As well as product reviews on marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart, sellers can also purchase seller feedback, and even votes to push positive reviews up<\/a>."}]},{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity2","name":"Digging into the dark world of paid online product reviews","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity2_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"During their study, the Which? researchers posed as an Amazon seller to speak to AMZTigers, a company based in Germany, which claims to have over 60,000 reviewers worldwide to gain an understanding of what their service offers. As well as offering to generate product reviews, the AMZTigers account manager claimed that they can even help a seller gain \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status within 2 weeks.This is a BIG<\/strong> consideration, as the Amazon Choice label is another crucial differentiator for marketplace sellers, and it can possibly give the impression that the product is endorsed by Amazon. While Amazon won\u2019t say exactly how an item is awarded \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status, it has said that the item has to be highly rated, well-priced, and available to ship immediately.The fact that sellers are willing to pay large sums of money and give away free products in exchange for positive reviews is a good indication of how powerful positive reviews are.<\/span><\/span>If this weren\u2019t the case, companies like AMZTigers would not exist."}]},{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity3","name":"Amazon\u2019s review policies","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity3_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"Amazon has strict policies aimed at protecting the integrity of reviews. They claim to analyse over 10 million reviews every week and to regularly ban, suspend, or even take legal action against those that violate their policies.In my own case, as soon as I reported the seller to Amazon, the emails offering to pay me to remove the negative review immediately stopped, so I\u2019m assuming that Amazon did something about it \u2013 although the product is still for sale on Amazon from the same seller.Companies offering these services can be easily found on search engines so it is hardly a clandestine underground service. I suspect many of us have previously read reviews for an Amazon product that are clearly for a different product or just don\u2019t appear real to know that Amazon\u2019s policies are not preventing this issue from happening. While the problem is not entirely limited to Amazon, it is one of the biggest marketplaces in the world so deserves a lot of scrutiny."}]},{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity4","name":"How to spot fake online product reviews ","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity4_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"So, how can users trust reviews they see on websites like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart? We know that reviews can have a high impact on a user\u2019s purchase decision, so when a merchant has gamed the system and generated a lot of suspect reviews, the customer is the one that loses out.The key to weeding out suspect reviews is learning how to recognise reviews that are likely to be fake. Red flags include:<\/span><\/strong>\n
  • Products that have a lot of very recent positive reviews<\/li>\n
  • Products that have a large number of reviews with photos attached (how many people really do that?)<\/li>\n
  • Overly detailed reviews for products that really don\u2019t deserve or need such a write up<\/li>\n
  • Reviews stating that the reviewer was given the product free of charge<\/li>\n
  • Reviews that are clearly for a different but related product; this is known as review merging<\/li>\nIn doing so, both provide users with an overall score for the accuracy and reliability of the product reviews, as well as providing more detailed insights into the patterns that they\u2019ve discovered.They can even provide an adjusted review rating, which often remove approximately 1 star from the rating. The tools look for patterns which indicate suspect reviews without the user having to trawl through thousands of other online reviews.Some of these tools even provide a browser plugin that overlay the review score on the Amazon product listing and display pages, which can be extremely useful. While these tools will not be foolproof, the score and insights they provide should be taken into consideration when making a purchase decision. "}]},{"@type":"Question","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity5","name":"The future of online reviews","acceptedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#subjectOf_FAQPage_mainEntity5_acceptedAnswer_Answer","text":"So will mistrust in reviews start to erode their value and will customers stop using them as part of their purchase decisions? Without action, I think the answer is simple and resounding: Yes.While this is unlikely to be a sudden change, the slow erosion in trust will continue to lessen the impact that reviews have on conversion rates and their value.Perversely, as the value of gaming the system reduces, sellers will be less likely to pay money to obtain fake positive reviews, and therefore they may become more trustworthy again \u2013 but this would be hard to predict.Ultimately, the solution is for the marketplace platforms to do much more to prevent this happening. I don\u2019t believe that my experience regarding my recent online review was unique. The fact that companies like AMZTigers, Fakespot, and ReviewMeta even exist and openly advertise their services tells us that a massive problem lurks below.As trust in marketplace reviews diminishes, this will have a knock-on impact on consumer trust in the marketplace itself. If I can\u2019t trust reviews on Amazon, I am less likely to buy from them \u2013 so resolving this issue isn\u2019t just the right thing to do, but it will also have a long-term commercial impact, as trust is ultimately at the heart of any product or brand thriving.<\/span><\/span>Marketplaces should dedicate more resources to preventing the gaming of their review programmes, as well as making the consequences for breaching the terms more severe. In my case, the seller clearly and brazenly breached the terms, but is still selling the same product on the platform.Only when the cost and consequences of gaming the system outweigh the benefits will sellers stop."}]}]}],"image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/#Article_image_ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/online-product-reviews-FCEE-1200x630.jpeg","width":"1200","height":"630"}],"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2021\/05\/18\/online-product-reviews-consumer-trust\/","articleBody":"\n We know online product reviews are crucial to products being sold \u2013 but is customer trust in reviews being eroded by nefarious sellers gaming product review systems with fake product reviews?\nUnfortunately, a great deal of signs point to \u201cyes.\u201d\nThere are many occasions where we rely on reviews to help us distinguish between products or services \u2013 especially when there are a multitude of choices.\nI recently bought a digital thermometer on Amazon, where there was a plethora of hundreds of devices, so I \u2013 like many of you reading this have likely done \u2013 relied on the reviews to help me make the decision. However, upon purchasing it, each time it was used, I\u2019d get completely random results \u2013 making clear that the device wasn\u2019t nearly as reliable as the reviews had led me to believe.\nA few days later, I received the typical email from Amazon, asking me to review the product, so I posted an accurate and honest negative review. I often review my Amazon purchases, as I know that I tend to rely on them myself when buying from the website. Like many customers, I tend to review the items I really like and those that I really don\u2019t.\nWhat happened next was quite an eye opener into the world of Amazon product reviews.\nTruth hurts: We\u2019d love your feedback. Wait. Not *that* kind of feedback.\nOver the following few weeks after posting my online product review, experience, and feedback of the item, many emails from different addresses began arriving in my inbox, all offering money if I\u2019d remove the negative review. They even provided a link with instructions on how to do it.\nDespite me replying and stating that I was unwilling to change my honest product review, the emails continued. It only stopped once I reported it to Amazon, who, to their credit, took it quite seriously.\nThis got me thinking about the process of online reviews:\n\nIf this has happened to me, how many other people are tempted by the offer of money, and go ahead and remove a negative online product review?\nWhat about the positive reviews \u2013 do Amazon sellers pay people to post them?\nDo sellers pay people to leave negative product reviews for the products of their competitors?\nCan we even really trust reviews at all?\n\nCountless studies have shown that user-generated reviews can have a big impact on your conversion rates, although, admittedly, many of these studies have been published by companies that sell review management services.\nIt completely stands to reason that user-generated reviews can be very powerful tools in influencing a buying decision; especially with something technical or expensive like a new TV or a holiday vacation.\nI\u2019d expect that almost everyone reading this post has viewed Amazon, Yelp, or TripAdvisor reviews at some point, and that these have influenced the buying decisions that were made.\nWith a vast array of marketplaces flooded with different product options \u2013 most at a similar price points \u2013 reviews can be the key differentiator when it comes to clicking \u201cbuy.\u201d But is the race to win on reviews damaging the trust customers have in them, and will this, ultimately, dilute the importance and the impact of online product reviews, and their conversion rates?\n\n \n You can lose a customer in a moment. So how do you build trust for a lifetime?\n \n \n Customers can be won - or lost - in an instant. Learn how to forge the bonds needed to survive the rocky moments that happen in any relationship.\n \n \n\nGaming the system: Bulk-buying online product reviews is a massive risk for brands\nA recent investigation and report by Which? detailed exactly how easy it is for Amazon sellers to buy verified reviews in bulk. Just a simple Google search finds a number of companies offering a review generation service. They use techniques to get around the Amazon guidelines and to ensure that the reviews appear to be genuine.\nMost of the time the process involves providing your product to reviewers for free or at a discounted rate but, for an additional fee, some services will guarantee that your product is returned once the review is submitted. As well as product reviews on marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart, sellers can also purchase seller feedback, and even votes to push positive reviews up.\nThe prices for these services start from around $10 per review, but can be much higher for certain categories of products \u2013 this further highlights both how valuable genuine-looking reviews can be, and the dangers for brands if companies can pay money for bad reviews.\n\n \n Customer trust: A true definition, value, and 5 tips to earn it\n \n \n To compete, you need to deliver outstanding experiences. To do that, you need valuable customer data. And to get that, customers need to trust you.\n \n \n\nDigging into the dark world of paid online product reviews\nDuring their study, the Which? researchers posed as an Amazon seller to speak to AMZTigers, a company based in Germany, which claims to have over 60,000 reviewers worldwide to gain an understanding of what their service offers. As well as offering to generate product reviews, the AMZTigers account manager claimed that they can even help a seller gain \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status within 2 weeks.\nThis is a BIG consideration, as the Amazon Choice label is another crucial differentiator for marketplace sellers, and it can possibly give the impression that the product is endorsed by Amazon. While Amazon won\u2019t say exactly how an item is awarded \u2018Amazon Choice\u2019 status, it has said that the item has to be highly rated, well-priced, and available to ship immediately.\nThe fact that sellers are willing to pay large sums of money and give away free products in exchange for positive reviews is a good indication of how powerful positive reviews are.\nIf this weren\u2019t the case, companies like AMZTigers would not exist.\n\n \n How to win customer trust: 5 strategies to earn loyalty\n \n \n Customer trust is at the center of everything. Follow these five principles to understand, build, and maintain customer trust.\n \n \n\nAmazon\u2019s review policies\nAmazon has strict policies aimed at protecting the integrity of reviews. They claim to analyse over 10 million reviews every week and to regularly ban, suspend, or even take legal action against those that violate their policies.\nIn my own case, as soon as I reported the seller to Amazon, the emails offering to pay me to remove the negative review immediately stopped, so I\u2019m assuming that Amazon did something about it \u2013 although the product is still for sale on Amazon from the same seller.\nBut is Amazon doing enough?\nAre they protecting the buyers they rely upon?\nCompanies offering these services can be easily found on search engines so it is hardly a clandestine underground service. I suspect many of us have previously read reviews for an Amazon product that are clearly for a different product or just don\u2019t appear real to know that Amazon\u2019s policies are not preventing this issue from happening. While the problem is not entirely limited to Amazon, it is one of the biggest marketplaces in the world so deserves a lot of scrutiny.\nHow to spot fake online product reviews \nSo, how can users trust reviews they see on websites like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart? We know that reviews can have a high impact on a user\u2019s purchase decision, so when a merchant has gamed the system and generated a lot of suspect reviews, the customer is the one that loses out.\nThe key to weeding out suspect reviews is learning how to recognise reviews that are likely to be fake. Red flags include:\n\nProducts that have a lot of very recent positive reviews\nProducts that have a large number of reviews with photos attached (how many people really do that?)\nOverly detailed reviews for products that really don\u2019t deserve or need such a write up\nReviews stating that the reviewer was given the product free of charge\nReviews that are clearly for a different but related product; this is known as review merging\n\nAnother option for finding fake product reviews is to use online tools like Fakespot or ReviewMeta. These are both very powerful and actionable tools using multiple algorithms to analyse fake online product reviews.\nIn doing so, both provide users with an overall score for the accuracy and reliability of the product reviews, as well as providing more detailed insights into the patterns that they\u2019ve discovered.\nThey can even provide an adjusted review rating, which often remove approximately 1 star from the rating. The tools look for patterns which indicate suspect reviews without the user having to trawl through thousands of other online reviews.\nSome of these tools even provide a browser plugin that overlay the review score on the Amazon product listing and display pages, which can be extremely useful. While these tools will not be foolproof, the score and insights they provide should be taken into consideration when making a purchase decision.\nThe Fakespot Chrome plugin altering the review score from 4.5 to 3.5 on Amazon.\n \nDetailed analysis provided by Fakespot for reviews of a product on Amazon.\nThe very fact that these tools exist illustrates that there\u2019s a widespread issue with sellers gaming online product reviews.\n\n \n How to boost online conversion: Listen to your customers\n \n \n Product reviews can provide a better understanding of improvements that could be made to a retailer\u2019s product offering \u2013 whether that's the assortment of products or how they\u2019re described. The review\/feedback mechanism also helps build a resource of online content about a retailer\u2019s assortment and the customer experience that future consumers can digest \u2013 and could influence their purchasing decision.\n \n \n\nThe future of online reviews\nSo will mistrust in reviews start to erode their value and will customers stop using them as part of their purchase decisions? Without action, I think the answer is simple and resounding: Yes.\nWhile this is unlikely to be a sudden change, the slow erosion in trust will continue to lessen the impact that reviews have on conversion rates and their value.\nTrust is such an important aspect in customer experience. It takes a long time to gain and a short time to lose.\nPerversely, as the value of gaming the system reduces, sellers will be less likely to pay money to obtain fake positive reviews, and therefore they may become more trustworthy again \u2013 but this would be hard to predict.\nUltimately, the solution is for the marketplace platforms to do much more to prevent this happening. I don\u2019t believe that my experience regarding my recent online review was unique. The fact that companies like AMZTigers, Fakespot, and ReviewMeta even exist and openly advertise their services tells us that a massive problem lurks below.\nAs trust in marketplace reviews diminishes, this will have a knock-on impact on consumer trust in the marketplace itself. If I can\u2019t trust reviews on Amazon, I am less likely to buy from them \u2013 so resolving this issue isn\u2019t just the right thing to do, but it will also have a long-term commercial impact, as trust is ultimately at the heart of any product or brand thriving.\nMarketplaces should dedicate more resources to preventing the gaming of their review programmes, as well as making the consequences for breaching the terms more severe. In my case, the seller clearly and brazenly breached the terms, but is still selling the same product on the platform.\nOnly when the cost and consequences of gaming the system outweigh the benefits will sellers stop.\n If you\u2019re not reaching customers on their preferred channels,\nyou\u2019re not reaching customers.\nThink bigger. Think better.\nWe can help. Find out how HERE.\n\n\n\n\n\t\n ","name":"How to spot fake online product reviews: The dark side of e-commerce","dateModified":"2021-09-07T11:58:43+00:00","datePublished":"2021-05-18T05:03:05+00:00","headline":"How to spot fake online product reviews: The dark side of e-commerce","description":"Learn how to spot fake online product reviews and report them. 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