How Do Ratings and Reviews Provide Value for Consumers and Marketers?

Tom Canterino • June 30, 2021

How Do Ratings and Reviews Provide Value for Consumers and Marketers?

Ratings and reviews are an integral part of the modern marketplace. 

They have been around for years, but they’ve become increasingly popular in recent years with the rise of social media. Reviews help consumers make informed decisions on purchases, and can be a powerful tool for marketers to influence their audience. This blog post will explore how ratings and reviews play both roles, as well as some best practices you should follow if you want them to work for your business!

  • Ratings and reviews provide value to consumers by helping them make better purchasing decisions. They are particularly useful for products that people may not buy or use often, such as mattresses or vacuum cleaners.

  • A study from the University of California found that ratings can influence a consumer’s opinion about a product even when they haven't used it themselves! For example, if someone has had experiences with an item in the past through friends' recommendations, they might assume those positive results would transfer over to other items too - this is called "social proof."  These perceptions play into how well your online marketing efforts work across channels like Facebook Ads. If you have five stars on Yelp but only two out of four on Google Reviews, then you have to think about how you would approach your campaign differently.

  • Ratings are also important for companies that make large purchases like machines and equipment, or even just bulbs to light up a store - it's hard to know which product is the best until they're actually used in their intended environment. For example, consumers may have read reviews of appliances online but once they go into the showroom and see them in person, then all bets are off! Based on colors, features, etc., there could be one clear favorite based on aesthetics alone.  If this buyer has gone through a few products already without success with more research ahead of time as well as having an idea of what will work better within their space limitations (or budget!), then customers can feel less  pressured to make a decision.

How Do Ratings and Reviews Provide Value for Consumers and Marketers?

The internet is an increasingly important place both in marketing research as well as customer reviews, but there are pros and cons of course. For customers, it's just so easy! It can be difficult to know which product will suit their needs best if they have never used the item before or they only had one chance to test drive a vehicle - this means that consumers need unbiased opinions from others who share similar tastes or use cases.

On one hand, reviewers might give biased ratings based on how much they enjoyed using the product (or didn't) while other people could provide more objective feedback about performance over time. In many ways though, these ratings and reviews  are a very valuable resource for marketers. When it comes to deciding which product will sell, market research is only as useful as the information that was collected - and feedback from people who have purchased products can be invaluable in determining customer opinions about those items.

Bullet Points:

  • Ratings and reviews are especially important because they provide customers with unbiased feedback on their experience with a particular company's or brand's service or product.

  • Reviews might not always be reliable because some could be biased by how much they enjoyed using the item while others may provide more objective feedback over time.

  • Marketers should know what consumers really think of their brands when making decisions such as which products will sell based on their own consumer insights data.


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