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.

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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?

Bestseller Book – Boy Swallows Universe

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Love conquers all, love is the thing that will get you through … You’re not allowed to let the hand you’ve been dealt be your excuse for being a knucklehead.

Trent Dalton, ‘Boy Swallows Universe’

Followers of my blog may find the book - an Aussie bestseller and the Netflix series due for release tomorrow worth viewing.

The book Boy Swallows Universe has won a host of awards and which was longlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.

Highly relatable and engaging, the story is semi-autobiographical and written by Australian journalists, Trent Dalton, a staff writer for The Weekend Australian.

The book which has also been adapted for stage and screen is a coming of age story set in Brisbane and surrounds. Trent recounts many of the places and times that I knew myself growing up.

Take a look and let me know what you think?

Dog Friendly Cafes and Bars

Unlike a lot of Europe, dogs are not welcome at all eating venues around Australia. The select ones that do welcome dogs, were so few a decade ago that I started a social media group to identify and share information about their location. It now has almost 9000 members. That is a lot of folks wanting to take their doggy with them to eat/have coffee.

Mostly the allocated dog friendly space at an Australian Dog Friendly Cafe is outdoors, without a fixed roof, if the venue is serving any kind of food. I do understand that dogs are unpredictable and can bark or become a nuisance. If this is the sort of dog you have, you probably would hang out at a park instead of a cafe.

Bearing this in mind, it was with much excitement that I attended Dalgety Public House located on the riverside fringe of the CBD. Not only did this Gastropub welcome dogs, they offered wide range of events, lunchs dinners, and weekend breakfasts. The meal we had was scrumptious and the Barista was a talented coffee artist who decorated our coffee crema with our own pet or animal of choice.

Here is some of her creations. Guess which one is my pup?

Are dogs accepted at cafes, pubs in your area?

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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!

Travel Tips and Reviews

Travel Reviews and Tips for Travelling

Are you travelling to any of the following destinations:

• Australia
• Austria
• Denmark
• Italy
• Finland
• Germany
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Poland
• Singapore
• Sweden
• Switzerland

If so take a look at my Travel Tips Page

You can also find other useful information such as:

Packing tips for Travel

Scandinavian – Books for those who wish to travel via words

Amanda in Denmark

Come back again – I am adding more reviews all the time

No Dead bodies – Just a True Story of Courage and Love

 Quite unusually, I’ve been reading a book that has no dead bodies contained within its pages.

(See my book review page here for the lists of crime fiction novels I usually read). 

Biographies of interesting people, are also on my book shelf, but the title of this book, given to me by a work colleague, did not give me any clue as to the intensity of the story within.

 

 

Horse boy is the story of one family’s journey to heal their severely autistic son. Conventional western therapies were yielding little success and their son’s tantrums and neurological trauma appeared to be  increasing, exponentially.  Spurred on by an accidental discovery that Rowan had a special gift with horses, the family embarks on a monumental adventure that takes them to the outer regions of Mongolia. 

Anne Holt: Fear Not (2011)

This novel is the fourth in the Norwegian series with Johanne Vik and Adam Stubø as the husband and wife team, with Adam being the ‘gentle giant’ detective and Johanne, his wife who is an ex profiler with a nose for investigative leads.

Very soon in the novel, we are introduced to several different story threads:

Johanne´s vulnerable daughter, Kristiane, gets lost when the family participates in a wedding in Oslo, and if a mysterious stranger had not saved her, she might have been killed in front of the tram.

Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard is found murdered on Christmas Eve in Bergen. She is a popular person, well known for her struggle to keep the church united despite the question of marriage of homosexuals.

The body of a seventeen-year-old asylum seeker is found in the harbour of Oslo. The young man was a prostitute, and soon after a homosexual woman disappears from a happy relationship.

Marcus Koll, affluent businessman, lives together with his partner Rolf and his son, Little Marcus. Beautiful and safe on the facade, but apparently Marcus fears he will be the next victim.

What do the crimes have in common? Are old family secrets behind all these crimes, or is the common denominator homosexuality? Johanne Vik is engaged in researching hate crime, and via her research she can point out the connection among the seemingly isolated events to the police.

There are many things to like in this series, but it seems to me that Holt has this tendency to involve Johanne and her children every time. Exciting for the characters, and fundamental to the storyline perhaps, but not very credible. But then it is fiction, isn’t it? So why quibble?

I guess that whilst I enjoyed this Anne Holt story, it does lack a little of the intensity I feel when I read the Hanne Wilhemson’s series. Perhaps I feel more for the character of Hanne, for her keen detective sense and her stoic, rigid and sometimes arrogant manner, than I do for Johanne Vik and Adam Stubo who seem to be awfully familiar to another couple in a similar detective series written by a Swedish crime writer.

If you are a Nordic crime fiction fan, you won’t be disappointed, but the bar is getting ever higherin the realms of Mordic crime fiction with many more excellent writers, emerging from the colder regions of the world, each year.

Rating: 7/10

Something to Ponder About