Research studies show the importance of reviews and ratings on the path to purchase. Online customer reviews can have a major impact on the business of retailers and a host of other companies (on and offline).
That’s why you may need a role or a team responsible for managing reviews, ratings, questions and other consumer-generated content (CGC).
Larger retailers such as Shop Direct and Argos in the UK have already moved in this direction.
The importance of reviews
A study by the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London asked 18 subjects to give a star rating to 210 products based on an image and description on a retailer site. Then they were shown products with the consumer ratings and asked to rate again. The researchers also studied which part of the brain was used by reviewers (but this is way beyond the scope of this article… or author).
The following image, taken from the UCL paper, shows the same product image of a pair of headphones, one has a summary description and the other is accompanied by a summary of reviewer ratings. Below that is the ratings the subjects gave when they gave their impression of the product.
Summarising the research Science Daily (May 2017), reports:
‘After seeing the online reviews, participants’ judgments were heavily influenced by the reviews and gave ratings that were in between their original rating and the average review score.
‘The number of reviewers also matters. The higher the number of ratings, the more closely the subjects would align their new rating with the average rating. The lower the number, then less closely the new rating would be aligned.
‘You don’t need to be a scientist to do some user testing or A/B testing along the same lines.’
