The peer reviewed article I would like to discuss in
this blog post is from Logan Kugler “Keeping Online Reviews Honest”. In this
article, author explains that as social media is expanding, consumers are
relying on online reviews for making decision about products to buy and for searching
the reliable brands and businesses. Author has also provide some statistics for
those consumers who get interact with online reviews.
88%
of U.S customers depend on online sources to make decision that whether the
local business is good business or not. 77% says that positive online sources
help them to trust a business, 88% consumer’s thinks that trust online reviews like
a personal recommendation. 30% people say that they trust online reviews if
they are real reviews. It is important that the online reviews are the
authentic reviews and not a fraud. Author discuss about the Amazon’s Canadian
site which had found that there are some authors who are using fake names and giving
favorable reviews to their books. In cases like this the websites business also
goes down. This is bad for both consumers and business as well. Small business
are not much efficient with online review system and they should not use fraud
reviews because they can experience such attacks where people can find that
they are adding fraud reviews. Fraud and fake reviews can negatively affect the
customers. By reading fake comments or reviews they can make wrong decisions.
Now question is that how can we find that a review is
a fake review? Author explains that they are some ways which can tell if the
reviews are fake or not. He explains that online reviews has options where we
can see that does this reviewer has reviewed anything else or not. A reviewer
with a single review can be considered a fraud. Computer can also detect the
fraud reviewers and there are ways to identify fraudulent
reviewers operating as a group. Researches are also working to detect fake
reviews by considering the online review contents. Paper presented at the World
Wide Web 2012 conference, described about the behavior model called GSBank which
can detect fake reviewer groups. The book of Bing Liu, also discusses about
some methods which can help detect the fraud reviewers. He explains that fake
reviews don’t make consistency and their style of comments are also different
from real reviewers.
Author also have this question that what can we do
with these fake reviewers? Yelp is also approaching to resolving the doubts
about fake reviewers. They are separating recommended reviews from those that do
not satisfy its screening standards. Other are limiting to write the reviews
for those who adding the comment at first place. Scholars suggest that we
should do background check and identity verification and others are promoting
the voting system for the consumers.
Author explains that it is very important for social
media and social networking to provide authentic reviews to their customers so
they can make right decisions. He thinks that computer science can help to find
more ways to detect the fraud reviews.
Another interesting blog - I for one find reviews very helpful and I strongly believe they are needed for business owners and their customers. Business owners need reviews to know how well or bad they are doing and the customers need them to make smart decisions. Although social media has been very helpful in advertising businessess to the general public, but we never seem to think of how that particular AD got into the media. Some people believe, if it’s on TV, it must be good but that’s not always the case. We all have to remember that we live in a world where money controls everything and money could very well control the reviews we are reading. However, I’m glad to hear there are methods one can use to detect fake reviews and more importantly, there are people out there that are very passionate in keeping online reviews honest.
ReplyDeleteSarah, I really enjoyed reading your post. It was insightful and quite relatable. People truly do rely on social media to help them make decisions about what products to buy. It’s really interesting to see how a reviewer’s comment can really influence where we conduct business and whether or not we choose to buy something. I know when I shop on places like Amazon.com, the comment section is the first place I go to see if it would be a good idea to buy a specific product. I think social media’s input can really help businesses as well because if they continue to get a constant feedback on their product they can continue to make more or move on to something else.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting blog post Sarah, I have never read about the fraud reviewers. This is one of the issues that comes with Social Media and is difficult to eliminate from Social Media. When viewers are scrolling through the reviews about a product or service, most of them will not have time to check if a review is fraud or not. I would say that both the consumers and businesses should be determining the fraud reviews and working to eliminate them. However, I think that mainly it is the businesses that get affected. This is because, when a customer buys a product after reading positive reviews about it and then the product turns out to be dissatisfying. Then, the customer might not trust the company for other products too.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah. Interesting article -- very good find. I was a bit surprised though; it sounded as if most of the "fake" reviews were in the negative. But isn't it just as likely, if not more likely, that fake reviews would be positive? I say this because I'm always worried that owners and proprietors of businesses and products would create fake accounts and leaving glowing reviews to drum up business.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really basing that on any hard science. Just it seems like there is a clear incentive there. Not sure what the incentive is for a negative one. Any thoughts?
I think when it comes to Online Review, I have personally never put my decision based on these reviews. Some are pickier than the others when it comes to product or service, and some just do not care as long as they can use what they bought. As people are inconsistent and have different views when it comes to different things, it is very important to use them simply as a guide not completely rely on. This goes same as review on entertainment such as movies. I have had the experience that people sees and review a movie as an awful movie, but when I watched it, it is a pretty good movie. Review cannot be completely replied on.
ReplyDeleteSarah- I am part of that 88% of consumers who depend on online sources for reviews of businesses and products. I am an avid Amazon shopper and what appeals me most about this website are the reviews provided by buyers. I am usually very hesitant about buying new things unless I know it is good or it has a good reputation. I do worry about the reliability of reviews, which is why I prefer to see more reviews on a single product. I worry the most about business owners talking up their own product so people will buy it (or business).
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I really like your explanation. It makes the article easy to read and understand it better. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. As your statistics indicate that 77% people trust online reviews I also agree with this. Being a user I usually look over the reviews online before making a choice of restaurant mostly. I think Social media has helped us in many ways which cannot be ignored.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that we will ever be able to fully find the fake reviews because as they figure out how to locate the fake reviewers, these fake individuals will find their own way around the system. There are just those people out their that like negativity and you just have to find out the truth behind the product or company yourself. I think we rely on the internet so much, that it has now given a way to guide us in what to buy. Before the capability to review a business or product we just tried it ourselves and though I look for reviews myself, I personally like to try things out myself. I also sometimes go to a business and use a product that has bad reviews to make my own opinion. I had a great example of why I could have given Red Robin a horrible review but I didn't. I waited over an hour for my food to come out and never once was checked on to see if we needed anything, like a refill. I was pretty angry because dining with two kids is hard and it wasn't that busy, way before the lunch rush came in. I asked to get the check to pay for the drinks and to cancel our order, while I was waiting to leave, the waitress still didn't come over to apologize about the mix-up. The manager came over paid for everything and gave me my order within seconds. He apologized and was amazing, even after I said I would pay because I don't like taking things for free, he wouldn't let me. I could have written something bad but I didn't because I know that all businesses have bad days and products may not be what that person wants but what you might want. Take reviews as a guide but not so serious you won't try something that may be actually great. Remember when reading reviews that the person could have just been having a bad day and took it out on the first thing they could. I am not surprised that 77% of people trust online reviews but remember we are human and our emotions can play a role in the review.
ReplyDeleteSarah, ha I never knew that fraud reviews existed! Or that there are people that work in groups to write fake reviews. It kind of makes sense though why some people would. I know that some business offer deals if they leave a great Yelp post. For example: myEyeDr offers a free pair of sunglasses to those who leave a good Yelp review. They just have to show proof. Makes sense why people like Karine and myself who depend on reviews when I'm deciding to purchase something or not. But as consumers we have to be mindful that not everything that we read is true, just with anything in life. If you want to know for yourself do your own research. I'm glad that you shared this article to inform us that not every review is accurate due to fraudulent activity.
ReplyDeleteI think reviews go a long way in the online shopping world. I mean look at amazon that is one thing that they promote with their business, and encourage shoppers to do. Then reviewers haven’t really decided to stop at online shopping sites, so came the creation of Yelp! Restaurants have then shifted to make sure that they try to improve their business based on the reviews they were receiving to attract new cliental. Reviews in the business setting have gone from word of mouth to online, where several people can talk about it and inform several others. Personally I look at reviews before I go eat a new restaurant to see what they recommend, and what I should look our for.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting topic. It is something that could probably have a law passed because of it. I would be very upset if I bought something based off of a review that I thought was someone that actually used the product and instead it was the producer or someone working on behalf of the producer. It would be very beneficial for websites to be able to figure out whether a review was fake or not and be able to block it. I for one feel like if I was made known of a company or person that was putting out fake reviews on their products, I would not trust what they are selling. So that would probably be very harmful to a business if it was proven that they were providing fake reviews on their products.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you wrote about how to see if a review is real or fake. I know people who used to create fake Facebook accounts and post on their own timelines to make it look like they were cooler and more popular than they were, and I think that a lot of businesses and companies would try to do the same thing where they would create accounts on review sites to give themselves great reviews. Usually for me, if a review doesn't say something positive and something negative about the thing it's reviewing, I don't really take it seriously unless a lot of other people in the reviews are all also saying the same things.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this post. It is all too all very relevant to our every day lives today. As like many others, I also fall under the category of people who use online reviews for purchases. I shop on amazon often and since I don't like the whole process of shopping and returning and finding another item is why I chose to shop online for some needs rather than go to a real mall. However I do find it concerning that not all reviews are relevant so I try to look for the little check that says "certified buyer" or something of that nature so at least I know some reviews are opinions of those who actually purchased the predicted and gave it a try rather than the business owner themselves.
ReplyDelete