More Canadians than ever are turning to online reviews before buying products or services.
According to a consumer website called Made in Canada, one in nine people will read at least one review before making purchasing decisions, and 33 per cent of Canadians say they feel strongly influenced by online reviews, the vast majority of which they find on Google, Yelp, Facebook and TripAdvisor.
Consumers are not likely to trust a company with fewer than four stars, typically filtering reviews for products and services rated four stars or higher. As a result, most reviews are bimodal, meaning they tend to cluster on the low and high ends of the rating scale, says Katie Mehr, a professor in the Alberta School of Business who applies experimental psychology to online consumer rating systems.
Gauging the accuracy of those reviews can be tricky, especially when an increasing number these days are fake. But one way to shed some light is to look at ratings of individual attributes, says Mehr.
In a recent study based on her doctoral dissertation and published in the Journal of Consumer Research, she found that when consumers were asked to rate specific attributes of a subpar experience (one with a mix of desirable and undesirable aspects), they inflated the overall rating.
“We find that consumers who experience bad service at a restaurant, for example, provide higher overall ratings of that experience when they are also asked to rate the restaurant on food, service, ambiance and value,” she says.
“Being able to rate a specific negative aspect of an experience makes consumers less inclined to incorporate that negative aspect into their overall evaluation.”
The same inflationary effect was not found when consumers rated individual attributes positively.
“We thought that perhaps if the food is bad at a restaurant, but you’re reminded the service was good, it would also lead to a higher overall rating. That’s not what we find.”
