Who reviews products on Amazon.com

[pbray]

Cornell study unmasks Amazon's product reviewers.

What Shoppers Don't Realize About Amazon's reviews.

And the opinion piece Are Amazon reviews corrupt?

Interesting points about what motivates people to write reviews, and how the demographics of the reviewers differs from the demographics of the average Amazon.com shopper.

I've long thought that the so-called "customer" review function ought to be restricted to people who have actually bought the product from Amazon. But that would immediately knock out all of Amazon's top customer reviewers, so there's no chance it will happen.

Comments

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Interesting, particularly Laura Owen's analysis of the inherent problems with this system.

There's a company called B&H in New York which is one of the major online sellers of photo and video gear. They have customer reviews, but do restrict those reviews to people who have actually bought the specific products from them.

On eBay, I have had the experience of sellers actually retaliating viciously at a truthful but mediocre review (one person kept trying to bid up anything I bid on for months - I got very good at sniping instead).

I had a friend who died a few years ago who did a lot of amazon reviews, partly for the free books. He fit the demographic mentioned (male, older, retired) though I think he mainly did it because he liked reviewing.

I only check plot summaries on amazon, and almost always ignore the reviews. In general, I want to know the reviewer before trusting their review.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I knew some of the problems in this system, which were fairly obvious to anyone who's had a book reviewed on Amazon, but this was the first time I'd seen a detailed analysis of what was going on. The demographics of the top reviewers surprised me a bit, because the ones I knew of were from the romance side, who have female names (though that doesn't necessarily mean they are actually female.)

And eBay is indeed a pit of voles.