What Shoppers Don't Realize About Amazon's Reviews
.But there is some new evidence suggesting that Amazon’s customer reviewers—particularly the top 1,000 reviewers—do not always make independent decisions about which books and other products they write about. According to a new Cornell study that we previewed last week, the reviewers in many cases acknowledge that in order to maintain their high rankings and continue to receive free products (one of the perks of being a top reviewer), they have to make surprisingly calculated decisions about what to review and what to say about those products.
The author of the study, Cornell professor Trevor Pinch, says the fundamental problem is that people reading the reviews probably naturally assume that the Amazon reviewers are regular shoppers just like them—when, in fact, their relationship to the products they review can be a little more complicated. “The issue of the ‘customers’ not really being customers needs to be addressed,” says Pinch, who surveyed 166 of Amazon’s top 1,000 reviewers for his study.
We reached out to Amazon to talk about its product-review system, and to get the company’s response to some of Pinch’s claims. But the company didn’t respond.
In Amazon’s early days, in the late 1990s, the “Editorial Reviews” that appeared on book pages were written by Amazon employees—especially editors, but “anyone who worked for the company, including warehouse staff, were asked to write as many as 10 reviews a week.” Amazon later made deals with book review publications like Booklist Book Review, to copy their reviews of newly published books. Over time, the literary editors hired to write reviews in those early years have either left or moved to other positions in the company, and customers themselves have become the main source of reviews on the site.
Now, Amazon has outsourced the job of writing reviews to thousands of unpaid citizen reviewers. Seventy percent of the top reviewers are male, their median age is 51-60, and more than half hold a graduate degree. About 14 percent of those reviewers are professional writers. Why do they write the reviews for free? Respondents to Pinch’s survey overwhelmingly mentioned “self-expression” and “enjoyment” as their motivations. Many respondents also cited altruistic reasons for reviewing—“hope to help others decide whether to buy,” “wanting to share what I have liked with others,” etc. And some said they write reviews to help them keep track of the books they’ve read and the movies they’ve watched.
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Over time, the literary editors hired to write reviews in those early years have either left or moved to other positions in the company, and customers themselves have become the main source of reviews on the site. Now, Amazon has outsourced the job of
There's no summing up an event so staggeringly diverse in every way – in style, in location, in dramatic quality, in the age and expertise of the performers, and in the myriad different techniques used to bridge the gap between live performance,
(& she's courageous to write what she wrote, warning about decisions/consequences in encouraging way, esp for teens!)” What book should Palin review next? In her new memoir, Bristol Palin criticized Levi Johnston and Meghan McCain.
Late last week, Patch asked youngsters in Morris, Sussex and Somerset counties to send in their brief essays on why they should go get to see the show for free—with the promise that if they were picked, they'd follow-up with a write-up letting us know
I don't write many reviews these days, but as far as I'm concerned, eviscerating shitty games with snappy sarcasm is a public service. If 500 words of my resentment are more entertaining than 10 hours of your game, then you wrote a crappy game.
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