I’ve worked in the mobile game space for awhile and nearly all game reviews are fake or paid for in some way. I worked on 3 games last year that are all sitting at 4.5 stars on android and iOS. You know how I know those reviews are fake? Because I programmed the games and know they’re trash.
Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
191–198 of 198 posts
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#192As well they should. This is a game of cat and mouse. Consumers were ahead for a little while, but companies have really gotten a grasp on the internet, and they're winning the information war. It's no mistake that I've come to rely on brand name again. It's the best heuristic available to me. When all this first started (mid-2000s) I was actively avoiding basing ANY decision on brand name. For a brief window, I had…
Why not look at consumer reports ( https://www.consumerreports.org/ )? I purchased a subscription and use them quite a bit. The problem here is in willingness to pay. If companies are willing to pay to promote their product, you will need to pay to get objective information. Any attempts at free objective information is going to be vulnerable to pollution by those willing to spend resources.
What are your (or others') impressions of the usefulness of CR's ratings from a durability / longevity standpoint?
It's easy to create a product that will score well in a 1-day, or even 1-month trial.
It's harder to make (or assess) one over a multi-year lifespan. I've long felt CR falls flat on this mark, though it's a difficult one to make.
I'm not sure who else even plays in the space. J.D. Power comes to mind.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I would support a law that says if you're selling a product and have reviews you must also report how many you've sold over the last year, and how many returns (or maybe a percentage or something). That would be a much more useful metric.
It would be gamed anyway, you'd just get sellers saying "we'll give you twenty dollars for not returning the item."
Prosecute this as fraud.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also unevenly distributed cultural knowledge: anything less than five stars starts causing hassle for the driver. I hate this inflation but I also wanna make sure the person who gave me competent service that I would realistically mark as three stars - not bad, not great, job done exactly as specified and I'm perfectly happy with that - is going to get five. (hassle varies: offered fewer/worse-paying jobs is…
When I moved to California for a while I once made the mistake of describing my food at a restaurant with "fine, thanks" when the server asked how it was. Apparently this translates very differently in the culture of the Bay Area where it means something like "I am very upset" whereas in Boston I think this roughly would be read as "I am satisfied, but don't really feel like chatting."
There are clever words and/or phrases which do (or did) translate quite differently in British vs. American English. Starting with "clever" and "quite".
Key generally being that on a scale of 1--10, Brits tend to hover in the 5.00000003 to 5.000000031 range. Any deviation from that is an extreme reaction.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#195Companies like Amazon have no incentives to police gaming of reviews. A purchased item is money to them, regardless of if the purchase was a sponsored purchase. It's why fake products have equal or more reviews than popular products found in stores.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#196In Germany there's Stiftung Warentest [1] which offers reviews without the apparent conflict of interest. They release paid articles with review and comparison all kinds of items. I find their offering a breeze of fresh air compared to the dumpster fire that online reviews have become. [1] https://www.test.de/unternehmen/ (German)
Who pays for the articles and who writes them? Is this like Consumer Reports?
This is the description found on their "About Us" in English [1]:
Stiftung Warentest is a foundation. It was established in 1964 by the German federal parliament with the aim of helping consumers by providing impartial and objective information based on the results of comparative investigations of goods and services.
We buy products – anonymously from retailers, and make covert use of services.
We carry out tests – in independent labs that use scientific methods and follow our specifications.
We give verdicts – ranging from „very good“ to „unsatisfactory“, based solely on objective results.
We publish our findings – totally free of adverts in our magazines „test“ and „Finanztest“, and online at www.test.de.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#197Checkout Tabelog, a Japanese version of Yelp. Anything over 3.5 is phenomenal. 4.0+? Rare. 4.5 is probably the best sushi place in all of Tokyo. Anything over 2.0 is great. 1.5 is manageable and 1 or below is bad. We in the west just love so much excess. Everything is amazing or everything just sucks. Bimodal distribution and extreme greed. Most things in nature, society, etc are normally distributed and our review s…
tabelog's score is not average but very artificial by secret algorithm.
Re: Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
and Doordash. how is everything >4? are we really to believe that McDonalds has a rating of 4.6 out of 5? it makes the system completely useless.
If you order McDonalds, you probably know what McDonalds should taste like. If it meets 100% of your expectations, why would you rate it lower? Similarly, if I get a meal from Michelin Star rated restaurant and it fails to meet my high expectations, should it get a better rating than McDonald's just because the restaurants meal was still likely much better than McDonald's even if it failed to meet expectations?
Experience vs. expectations is the only reasonable way to interpret user-based scores even if they are not astroturfed. The problem is that you don't always know what the average user's expectations are and how they compare to your own and there is no basis for comparing scores between different objects.