What is a review? Why reviews are important?

Information about reviews

Review is normally referred to summarising and evaluating a published article . Review is summarising the information you have collected, learned and evaluated. As soon as you read an article recollect ‘ the heading and conclusions’ so that you can walk through the whole article in the mind. Recollecting the article through the heading and conclusion can be termed as a review. Reviewing information is the final step of the SQ3R process (which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall, and Review).

Types of reviews: 

• User reviews: Any one can volunteer these reviews. The user evaluates a product for himself after a purchase and write a review on the review sites. At amazon they have opportunity to write review if they purchase the product through Amazon. They are not reviews written by professionals. The reviews are written by verified purchasers
• Performance reviews: These type of reviews are conducted by employer in a company to evaluate the employee performance for appraisals. These review help the top management to promote or demote the staff.
• Book reviews: These reviews are called literacy criticism about a book or article. The review targets authors content, style and merit. These reviews are summary of the book and how they matter to the reader.
• Product reviews: These reviews help both purchasers and brands. Brand improve the quality and customers recommends the products to potential people.
• Service reviews: Service reviews are similar to product reviews where the service like meeting delivery service, fulfilment of alloted service to the satisfaction of the customer.

How athentative the reviews are?

All reviews are not reliable. More authentication of a review is unbiased product evaluations. Now a days there are paid reviews. Brands pay writers to right reviews. Those reviews help the brand to improve their product. Professional write reviews after evaluating and testing the product in critical situations. Purchasers also write reviews where they express their experiences after purchasing and using the product for some time. They rate the article with stars. The stars range from 5 to 1. excellent to bad. Any abnormal rating in product review evaluation is a fake review.

How to identify a fake review:

It is not easy.

• See the review under 3 to 4 star instead of 5 stars. Those reviews are 90% genuine.
• See the profile of the reviewer and his other reviews. You can spot the culprit.
• Paid reviews always give 5 star rating. So avoid them.
• Verify whether the reviews are from a verified purchaser. Shoot questions and doubts. A fake reviewer will not respond.
• If there are too many reviews on the product in a particular time, they might be fake.
• Fake reviews are created to boost sales, to cover negative reviews, to promote low priced products and because they are paid to write reviews.

Reviews help customers to choose the right product

Review is the the expression of feeling or personal experience about a publication or product or service or brand. Product review tells about the ‘good and bad of the product’. This will help both new customers and the manufacturer to take a decision. Customers will decide to buy the product or not and manufacturer will have an opportunity to improve the quality of the product. Service review on the other hand tells about the loyalty of the company that offers service and customer leaves their experience about the service the service provider offered. helping him more customers. While a brand reviews develops trust on the brand for future development.

How to evaluate a product?

Product review are trickey. In short all reviews are tricky in the way that there is no 100% positive or 100% negative review about a product. If a review is 100% positive, it is fabricated. A good product review always tell about the specifications of the product, salient and unique features, price difference and authority places to buy. The reviewer will also inform the negative side of the product without bias. The customer should draw a line and use his own diligence to select the final product. A useful product review will detail upon

1. Personal experiences of the customers that purchased the product for themselves and used it for a while. Then they will know whether they made a right decision buying the product. What are the deficiencies in the product. Even suggest for the new customers to buy or to be careful.
2. Clear product specifications. If specifications of the product is clear, the customer understand whether he wants it or not.
3. Give a list with specifications of similar products from other brands so that the customer will choose the right one.
4. Comparison review: Describe the product review in the form of a table from other sources. It will help customers to choose their choice.

Fake review detectors:

There are some analytical tools that collect the review data and analyse it scientifically and throw out fake reviews. Copy and paste the product link and they spotout fake review.

• Reviewmeta:
• Fakespot: There is a chrome extension for this app. Add this extension for chrome and shop. Do the setting for various online shopping portals like Amazon, Wall Mart, e bay and
• Review Index: Copy and paste the product URL into their testing area and identify the fake product. They work for Amazon locations like Amazon -UK, Canada, USA, India, Flipkart and Steam. There is a chrome extension. Install and do an easy shopping.

All these three are independent review analysing sites with their own methods of collecting review dta, systematically analysing and re rating them or mark the rating as adjusted.

Travel Reviews:

Travels will have confusion while going to a place. They have many doubts like where to stay? Where to go? and so on.

Reviews help them to easily choose hostels, flight rates and package offers that suits their budget and plan to see various places as their travel destinations. The travelers save time to organize their tour plan without roaming around.. Travel review sites:

• Expedia: Expedia a travel portal offer real time customer reviews on flights, hotels, cars and cruises the customers actually booked. They say in their review page ” don’t take our word for it. These reviews are new and updated. Use the sort feature to find opinions on the experience with Expedia and our customer service based on time or criteria. Expedia is always improving, in large part thanks to unfiltered customer feedback and complaints which help highlight opportunities to offer better service. Travel should be a pleasure, and how you plan a trip should be a seamless, transparent process.” Source: expedia reviews
• Trip Advisor: Tripadvisor is an American company. They have a website and mobile application and a online shopping website. They book online hotel reservations. Their comparison charts for hotels are really great. The hotel reservations suit any budget. here under is a screen shot of their hotel rent comparison. The customer can book the hotel from the cheapest source.

How important are the reviews to both comapnies and customers

Reviews help brands and customers equally, Both are benefited with genuine reviews. Brand get a feed back and implement improvements. Customers get the right product or service. Here is an infographic presentation of importance of online reviews.

Useful Resources:

• https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-review-sites
• https://www.vendasta.com/blog/top-10-customer-review-websites/
• https://gadgets.ndtv.com/reviews
• https://www.reviews.io/
• https://www.trustpilot.com/