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

[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.