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

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I read about this on Writer Beware earlier this week, and it confirms that my approach to Amazon reviews -- which essentially is "occasionally read one-star reviews for entertainment, but otherwise ignore customer reviews altogether" -- is in fact perfectly rational.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with sending people free books in exchange for reviews. (At least, I don't see anything wrong with it. I've been working in academic publishing for 15 years, though, which may have affected my view of this practice...) But you shouldn't call them "customer reviews" if they do not come from actual customers.

Disclaimer: I once posted a review on Amazon for a book that I not only hadn't bought from Amazon but hadn't bought at all, because it is such a bad and poisonous book that I refused to give the author or the publisher any money for it (I read it in a bookstore, in bits) but did want to say what I thought of it, for the record.

And that's another thing about "customer" reviews on Amazon: if they don't suffer from the pitfalls of quid-pro-quo reviewing, they suffer from response bias, because many people will take the trouble to go and post a review only if they either LOVED the {book/hotel/umbrella/snowblower} or if they hated its guts...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Right, it's the calling them "customer" reviews that is misleading. Not to mention that many of the top reviewers can't possibly read the volume of titles that they are reviewing. One top reviewer posts thousands of reviews a year--many of which appear to be based solely on catalog or backcover copy, and which often get key details wrong. (This reviewer also loves everything, giving books 4 or 5 stars.)

Authors have complained to Amazon about these kind of reviews, but Amazon has no interest in changing their system.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

You kind of have to wonder what's in it for someone who doesn't even bother to read the books ... I mean, if free books to read aren't your motivation for writing buttloads of Amazon reviews, what is? o_O