As per the title you surely get an idea that I will be talking about the manipulation of reviews in the e-commerce industry.
So, why you should understand the ”manipulation of reviews” is cited as an odious sin.
In short, I will say that, in the era where the needle to the sword everything is being purchased online by the customers.
under the so-called name of “trusted reviews and ratings”, some malicious beings are present who are trying to manipulate this trusted source in their own favour.
Normal customers like you and me are unaware of these manipulative practices and end up losing hard-earned money.
Thus reviewtestify decided to explain it.
How it is affecting us.
You may surely buy a product from Amazon,
had you ever wondered that one of the factors that influenced you to buy that product is the many good words saying and 4-5 ⭐ stars mentioned in the review section that pushed you to buy that product right now.
Of course yes! These sites use to play with customers’ psychology.
It is as similar to that when hundreds of people say a lie together becomes the truth.
And similarly, when in the review section you saw that hundreds of people are saying that this product is the best, it works best, this & that, blah blah!
Thus normal customer psychology got affected in a way that he ends up buying that product.
This game is now getting so bigger that many of us are not even trying to check the real specification of a product and just buy that product because it got 4.5 stars.
Read Amazon fake review scam news.
Why this is happening.
Yes, you know the reason, to gain profit, to gain so-called ‘trust’ and finally to gain more profit.
Small sellers on the marketplace, e-commerce websites to the giant market leaders (Amazon, Flipkart, etc) everyone is involved in this on some level.
From sellers’ point of view, it is the source of shortcuts that will open the gate of abundance sales as reviews and ratings help them to climb up in the algorithm list.
The more their rating the more their product will be shown to buyers and the more buyers see, leads to profit.
From the website point of view, it is the source of customers’ trust, an advantage over competitors and finally, profit commission from sales of more products.
How do they cheat?
There are so many ways, knowing all is next to impossible because even when you are reading this, one trick is being made by someone.
But as per my experience and research, I cite you some of them.
First.-. many sellers use to generate fake orders with help of their relatives or friends and then give ratings and reviews to themselves from their personal accounts.
Second.-. many sellers use 3rd party service providers whose work is to generate ratings in exchange for money.
Third.-. many sellers make multiple accounts, create fake orders and give ratings to themselves from different identities and locations.
and much more…
Although they do it very carefully after catching loopholes in the marketplace.
Fourth.-. in the case of websites themselves, you know all the algorithm and content is in their own hand, it should be not surprising if they give themselves ratings and reviews or mark them with a “best choice” tag on their own new product.
Precautions for customers
There are some practices suggested by reputed brand experts and as per my own experience.
- Avoid purchasing a product just after launch, it’s better to wait to listen to reviews and unboxing from trusted sources.
- Avoid buying the product from a newly launched website that you don’t trust much or see for the first time.
- Always do a little bit of research before buying a product.
- You can read an unbiased product review on reviewtestify.
- Do a reverse search like why people are disliking I phone 13. Believe me, it helps.
- On giant marketplaces like amazon/ Flipkart or any, they have some verified sellers so instead of buying from an unknown seller buy from them. eg. Flipkart has (truecom retail), Amazon has (cockublu retail)
Precautions for companies
- Among every marketplace, I found only amazon is the one that has a very strict policy against these manipulators, but still these people found some loopholes.
- Companies also can do some practices to avoid these kinds of malpractice and gain a legit consumer reputation.
- Allow the only regular existing buyers to write reviews.
- Disallow seller’s relatives and family members to give ratings on his own products.
- Make the rating process a few steps long so only legit customers spend time to review genuinely.
- Disallow sellers to see customers’ mobile no. or email, so they can’t give customers freebies or money in exchange for positive ratings.
- Punish loophole breakers because your whole company’s reputation depends on it.
Reality
As per above, you got some idea that wrong and biased reviews are manipulating innocents. Who are unaware of algorithms.
For example,
Suppose you want to buy a smartwatch, you open Flipkart watch some options, and you found a product with good images and video and a lot of positive reviews that people shared.
So you bought it finally, the product arrived, you unbox and start using it and after a week you found something unusual happening with the watch.
Its battery drains very fast and it’s also not waterproof as advertised on the website by the seller.
So you go to return it but its return window closed already.
You sucked.
You rethink that where the flaw happens you read reviews, everybody is talking positively then how the hell it not worked.
Similar to you many people suck, including me too that’s what I feel to throw light on this topic.
At review testify we are on a mission to write reviews for as many products as we can. We give them a Real truth score in which we measure a product on six difficult factors and at the end, we describe its reality.
Know how or what is RTS SCORE?
Read our unbiased rating on Truke wireless earbuds.
Conclusion
Here we are only talking about reviews and their related manipulation and malpractices thus other factors that influence a customer to buy products on E-Commerce sites are being counted as constant.
All the website names like Amazon or other we have mentioned is not blamed by us they are used to be for a general illustration purpose.
Online purchasing is as much risk as it is beneficial.
So, be sure to buy from authentic sources only.
FAQs
When sellers try to bait customers via call or email to give them any monetary or freebies reward in exchange for a positive rating of the product. It is a heinous sin, because of too many positive reviews many new customers will fall into the trap and buy it, thinking of a good product.
Any kind of malpractice attempt by the seller to grow his product rating, to gain more profit and fake brand reputation.
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wow
Yes, its true!