Death Star Alive and Well
The Death Star is alive and well… At least, that was my take away from this NPR Morning Edition piece about the impact of cutomer reviews on Amazon.com.
These days, it’s hard to remember a time when online customer reviews were not a mainstay of the way we go about buying everything — from entertainment to travel to fashion to food to books. The impact of the reviews is huge. And of some individual reviewers it turns out. Try to fathom the draw dropping number of books Amazon’s top reviewer, Harriet Klausner, has read and rated: 15,000 books and counting to date, according to the newstory. Now where can I get me some of that kind of productivity?!?
But do these ratings, which tend to be overwhelmingly positive (4 or 5 stars on Amazon’s 5 point scale), do any good? You bet was the upshot of a 2005 study by two Yale School of Management professors (Judith Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin), who put the business impact of customer reviews at Amazon.com and BN.com to the test. They found that an improvement in a book’s reviews leads to an increase in relative sales for the book on the sites.
And what about the 1-star reviews, you ask? What impact do they have? As Mayzlin explains on air, the “bad stuff hurts you more.” They found that the relative impact of the few 1-star reviews is greater than the impact of the entire galaxy of 5-star reviews.
While it’s tempting to think about these 1-ratings as Death Stars, that’s likely so much hyperspace. But one thing seems clear from the research. When it comes to buying online, or not buying as the case may be, it’s advocacy buy the book… badvocacy not. Yet another interesting data point to add to the growing body of research on why we should beware of badvocacy. Along with the Sith…
I have to believe this survey. When deciding on which books or albums to buy, I always try to drop by Amazon.com for a review of the product. The reviews there aren’t too short that they don’t really have any value. In fact, I rather enjoy reading them and would like to write a review myself if I had the time. It makes me wonder though if top reviewers get compensation for their work.
Harriet Klausner definitely has the right idea. I’m with you, Jen. Thanks for your post.