Unveiling the Truth: Decoding the Reliability of Modern Reviews

The same goes to testimonials, unofficial reports and private news.

Stars no longer worth a thousand words (Tsang & Prendergast, 2009) and reviewers are often being incentivised by direct benefits or intangible values such as fame and popularity.

When the reviewing options are getting easier, more people flippantly give their reviews resulting in rendering the review system useless (Shoham et al., 2017).

We no longer find reviews of 5.0/5.0 as trustworthy brands, especially after so many bad experiences with high review companies.

Having a high review could mean the company expressly paid for reviewer service.

A popular business could garner millions of reviews and we could be sure that most of these people are real. Being a real person does not mean they give real reviews (Zhang & Ghorbani, 2020).

There are many triggering factors that encourage false reviews such as herd mentality and conflict avoidance as modern people have more fear of offending people (Tjosvold & Sun, 2002).

I give reviews in Google Maps for free and I enjoy gaining the ranks from the points generated from each action. There is no fame involved basically due to the lack of social activities in Maps.

Also, I love to review on ecommerce platforms as I got awarded with points that could be used to offset my next purchase. Further to that, some vendors would actually perk me extra during my next order as they knew I gave a 5-star review. 

Now, what happens to those who didn’t give a good review but hoping to give the vendor another chance?

We are predominantly vengeful especially where there is monetary involvement (Xia & Kukar-Kinney, 2017) and the vendor will remember you for giving a bad review.

Our childhood story of the chef spitting into your food for being a bad customer deeply affected our rational mind. This, in relative, forbids the bad reviewers from revisiting the place they reviewed.

Fundamentally, reviews are there to improve the entire value chain of the product (Filieri, 2015). A person who reviews could mean he is upset and wants somewhere to vent. It could also mean he hopes to see an improved version of it.

We always take things for granted when someone is there to guide or teach us. Having the right kind tone with angry content is always better than having an angry tone with the right content (Ishii & Kitayama, 2002).

It takes both the reviewer and the vendor’s hands to clap. One has to give constructively while the other has to accept constructively too.

This goes the same to testimonials. Testimonials have become so ineffective that sometimes it even conveys a negative effect (Wardani & Sanica, 2020).

Inevitably when I chance into somewhere with plenty of testimonials, immediately I will deem that vendor as unreliable.

Many of you might remember, the only place I saw real reviews and field reports are in Sammyboy forum. It is a joke, but the marketing effects of reviews and testimonials in the modern era are over.

Same as everyone, I am seeing many biassed reports daily.

One of such reports is saying Web3 isn’t dead and there are ten of thousands of smart contracts being launched daily.

As technical trained, I do write my own smart contracts and very well know the ecosystem. That’s why I took particular notice of this. In fact, I deploy contracts often once in a while and it creates multiple contracts after.

When we see numbers like this, consider the many factors that could have caused it. You can have a million dollar asset but also incurred a million dollar debts.

To summarise, high number and volume does not mean a thing if it is at its equilibrium. Increment effort is more appreciated just like the review.

If a company got only 1 star this year, 2 stars next year and 3 stars the following, and so on. You see improvements and you know they are serious for business.

Get to know what is behind the ratings and do your due research before going for the stars.