Amazon’s system of consumer reviews and evaluations has been severely undermined by a flood of ‘imitation’ five-star testimonials for goods made by unknown manufacturers, a “Which?” Investigation has discovered.
The customer champion looked at hundreds of goods in 14 classes, including dashboard cams, headphones, fitness trackers and watches, assessing for tell-tale indications of reviews that were questionable.
“Which?” Discovered the items were dominated by brands with titles like Roger ITSHINY and Aitalk, that in several instances had tens of thousands of testimonials – meaning there isn’t any proof that the consumer used or has bought this item.
Many had a higher number of assessments which was dumped at a brief period of time on Amazon’s review pages – another red flag suggesting that the reviews are fake.
71% of these headphones had evaluations, and reviewers wrote some 87% of those 12,000 testimonials for these products, the report stated.
An Amazon spokesperson said in an announcement that the company spent “significant resources” to safeguard the integrity of testimonials on its own platform. “Even one inauthentic review is one too many. We have clear participation guidelines for both reviewers and selling partners, and we suspend, ban, and take legal action on those who violate our policies,” he said.
“Which?” Found similar results when seeking smartwatches, together with unverified testimonials making up 99% of the reviews for the top four goods.
“Our study indicates that Amazon is losing the battle against bogus reviews, together with shoppers bombarded with remarks aimed at artificially boosting goods from brands that are unknown,” explained Natalie Hitchins, the mind of home products at “Which?”.
As many as 97% of shoppers rely on reviews that are online to make a purchase, according to a study In September this past year.
Based on a research on U.S. consumer behaviour by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center, online testimonials possess the capability to boost cost rates by up to 380%.