Why Amazon’s “motivated” Reviews Are Biased, Even When They Claim They Aren’t
Amazon only allows sellers to provide free product samples to users if they disclose this fact in their review. Typically these reviewers claim to have been asked to provide an “honest” review. Regardless, they still tend to be more favorable than other reviews.
To highlight this fact, ReviewMeta’s review aggregator and analyzer analyzed data from over 18 million reviews. The site has scanned key phrases – often the reviews say something like “I got this product for free in exchange for my honest review”, making them easy to identify. They then checked to see if those reviews had a better rating.
Result: oh well. According to ReviewMeta, incentivized reviews rated products 4 stars higher than non-incentivized reviews on average. With an average rating of 4.4 stars overall on Amazon, that’s enough to take the product straight to the top of the charts. The video goes on to explain how, even if the reviewer tries to be honest, the selection process that free product distribution companies use to select their reviewers can create bias in the system.
It should be noted that even ReviewMeta’s own analysis should be viewed with a grain of salt. The site offers a free online review analysis tool, and the company admits it makes money through the Amazon Associates program . However, this seems like a less problematic bias than companies sending free products to selected reviewers, who are more likely to give positive feedback.
Evidence Proves Amazon’s ‘Free or Reduced Disclaimer’ Reviews Are Extremely Biased