The Value of Product Reviews -Helpful or Deceptive?

Most of us shop online these days, in varying degrees. For larger purchases, like appliances and furniture, I will flick through product reviews to ensure I am not sold a ‘lemon.’

Some of us conduct diligent research online checking product reviews on websites for any purchase. Naturally, they want to save money and purchase a reputable brand.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Companies Seek Customer Feedback

What’s more, companies follow up purchases, seeking out customers’ opinions – feedback is important to them. With varying degrees, our inbox might fill with invitations to respond to customer surveys like,

“So, how did we do?”

“How can we serve you better?

“Let us know what you thought of your purchase?”

Every company wants 5 stars, and to maintain that stellar rating and I am mighty conscious how even a random 1 star review can damage a brand, particularly a small business.

So, imagine my surprise when I was invited to review a purchase of shoes, and upon submitting a 4 star review with accompanying positive-worded tip to improve store/website service, I received this reply:

Our staff has read your review and values your contribution even though it did not meet all our website guidelines.
Thanks for sharing, and we hope to publish next time!

What good is a product review if the company only publishes 5-star reviews?

The Backstory

I had chosen a ‘click and collect delivery for my order. It was filled promptly and my daughter collected the shoes from the store. (We were soon to leave for Japan and had run out of time to get to the shops). When we opened the box, later that evening, the shoes were the wrong size, ( one size smaller), but there was no time to return them to the store, before our trip.

The store’s website detailed a sizing table which converted AUS, US and EURO sizes, but nowhere did the order page indicate which regional sizing you were actually selecting when you clicked “add to shopping cart.”

The store was closed when I sent in the order, I was unable to clarify this via telephone.

But I live in Australia and it is an Aussie store, so I was pretty confident the website would indicate if it was using anything other than Australian sizing.

Wrong! We had received the US sizing – (one size down from Australian sizes)!

Therefore, my 4 star review suggested politely that customers should call the store to check sizing of shoes prior to ordering, as the website doesn’t indicate which sizing is used.

It seems they valued my contribution but it was deemed not to meet store guidelines.

“Try again,” the email glibly suggested.

Pfft! I then supposed that their guidelines must direct publication of reviews if they are only positive and give the store 5-stars?

I wonder if this is store-wide or just a managerial decision? Perhaps Blogger Keith might share his wisdom with me in this regard?

Questions to Bloggers

Do you check product reviews?

Do you find them helpful?

Has this ever happened to you?

How Christmas Shopping is Changing

While Scandinavia observes the time-honoured rituals and traditions of Advent and selecting a live fir tree, Australian shoppers prepare for their Christmas experience by visiting Westfield shopping centres and erecting plastic Christmas trees.

Perhaps you call them malls or something else, but these concrete Westfield centres pay homage to Western greed and indulgence. They are places where every possible gift or want could be exchanged for money. But visiting these venues at Christmas is not just about purchasing gifts, it is also an endurance experience.

It is cut-throat and dog-eat-dog – believe me.

For instance, it is not uncommon to experience a minor verbal brawl over the last free car parking space at Westfield at Christmastime.

Once the Christmas shopping is complete, arms laden with bags brimming with gifts, Aussie consumers dodge and weave the line-up of vehicles circumnavigating the Westfield car parks, like participants in the old video game: ‘frogger.’

Woe betide any shopper arriving late to the shopping party (i.e. after 10 in the morning) as this automatically marshals you into a ‘hunt.’ To snag a spare car park after 10 am at Westfield is like winning the lottery. Any human carrying shopping bags in the car park precinct is stalked and followed in the desperate hope the ‘prey’ will vacate their car park and not just offload their gift cache and return to the shops for a second ‘run’ through the Christmas crowds.

Every man must fend for himself in this retail frenzy.

Thinking Outside the Box

I know of one homeowner who capitalised on Xmas, finding a silver lining in the chaos. Compensating for the proximity of his home to a Westfield shopping centre, he made a small fortune in tax-free cash, renting out his yard as an impromptu car park to desperate shoppers in the days leading up to and after Xmas.

Good on him. There has to be some compensation for tolerating the bastion of consumerism at your back door.

However, Westfield’s days seem to be limited – the pandemic has changed the consumer landscape forever.

Shopping online, or choosing to ‘click and collect’, saves most consumers time and stress. Modern youth embraces it – despite issues with delivery (tell me about it) and the fact that buying online produces more fossil fuels in transport and the manufacture of the necessary plastic packaging. This includes black plastic packaging, which can’t be recycled at all due to carbon black pigments.

So, I ask: what is the future for the behemoths of consumerism and the acres of asphalt that constitute the car parks?

Will the ‘Christmas Shopping phenomenon, the ruthless haggling over car park spots, and the bustling Westfield Xmas chaos relegate the concrete monoliths to a slow decay, unwanted and unable to adapt?

Is there still a place for the in-store shopping experience?

What do you think?

When Marketing Gets It Wrong

Do you read Product Reviews before buying a product?

The content of product reviews are increasingly influential for the public, when it comes to future purchasing choices. The opinion of the majority, or, the ‘herd,‘ also known as ‘Group think,’ is seen as paramount, as we discussed in a previous post .

Marketing techniques that target this type of thought and purchasing pattern, could be seen as lazy and fundamentally flawed.

Post-Purchase Screening of Customers

Consumers are more often than not, badgered by, not one, but several automated, emails asking them to give up their free time to:

“Tell us about your purchase,” and follow up if you do not reply to the email with a friendly:

“It’s not too late to tell us your thoughts.‘

Sometimes it is a text message asking,

“How did we do?” in serving you and requesting your idea of a numeric rating.

All this in the name of improving customer service.

Do you like this level of attention after you have purchased a product?

Can you imagined if I badgered my readers like that?

Do you like my blog?

How often do you read the posts?

Do you want a daily update?

Are you sure?

It is not too late to subscribe!

Receiving a 5 star rating in a review might boost product sales more than any media advertisement and costs the company nothing. In short, shoppers are doing the marketing work for the company.

Canvassing Customers can be Risky Business

A product review can cut both ways. Badger a customer for a response and you might get a response, but not the the company likes.

A poor review might damage reputations, especially if it remains published. The veracity of the review itself is always at the mercy of customer competency and subjective biases.

Marketing Fail # 1

For example:

Recently I purchased a kitchen appliance for my new house that intermittently stopped working.

Frustrated, I wrote an online product review with a poor rating, whilst the ‘Moth’, (a.k.a. Man of the House), took it back to the store, asking for a replacement.

The product tested perfectly well in-store, but with an explanation that it was an intermittent fault, as we thought, the store replaced it without hassle.

Back home, the replacement product malfunctioned again!

So. Hmm.

Maybe, just maybe it wasn’t the product, after all, but a faulty power source? After all, ours was a new home, with newly installed power points.

To our horror, the appliance worked without fault in a different power point.

With a guilty feeling in our gut, we had to admit the appliance wasn’t faulty at all. Yet what damage had I done to that product’s reputation with my poor review, in the meantime?

Marketing /Product Review Fail # 2

I purchased a bra online through a popular department store and the automated email follow up I received after store pick up, is seen below.

I was asked to add photos, a video and location information!

In a young lady who purchased intimate apparel, this might be considered intrusive, but can you imagine photos, or video footage, of a 50 something lady, modelling a bra?

Probably not the content the store was after for their site. Aside from the fact they would surely filter out such content, it begs the question what else would, or could, they filter out?

As for the question of location – I can see the rationale to that question, but in the context of a bra purchase, it felt voyeuristic and slightly creepy.

Generic email and privacy filter arguments aside, this exemplifies how this style of marketing fails miserably and just serves to defeat its intended purpose!

Imagine if I had purchased underwear, or God forbid, a sex toy!