Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them (Facebook, 2016). The ‘Ratings & Reviews’ function of the social networking site is something that is being used by largely by businesses to get customers to tell what they think. But the question is why do customers rate and review? Do you rate and review? If yes, how often do you do it? And why would you rate and review? We look at the importance and of ratings and reviews, why and how they help customers and businesses.
The uprising of Facebook reviews has resulted to companies such as Yelp failing as people effectively prefer to do things online and prefer everything to be in one place. According to USA Today, when Facebook began silently testing the new feature in 2015; Yelp’s shares fell 9% to $26.87. However, it can be taken in a positive perspective. Darren Aftahl from Roth Capital Partners said Facebook’s test “only strengthens our long-term thesis that Yelp’s business prospects and user growth could be further challenged in local.” This therefore demonstrates the growth of people wanting to share their opinions and experiences with others.
Ideally, customers who leave reviews must follow the Facebook Community Standards to create a valid review and must focus on the product or service offered by the page (i.e. business) and be based on their own personal experience. Online customer reviews have real bottom-line benefits including increasing conversion, lowering return rates and customer dissatisfaction, and boosting SEO efforts (DigitalVisitor, 2012).
Recent research has also shown that customer reviews can have a positive influence on sales. Chen et al. (2008) found that the quality of the review as measured by helpfulness votes also positively influences sales and Clemons et al. (2006) found that strongly positive ratings can positively influence the growth of product sales. Online customer reviews can be defined as peer-generated product evaluations posted on company or third party websites (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010). A number of sites that provide consumer ratings have emerged in speciality areas (Dabholkar 2006) such as travel.
Before looking at how to encourage people to leave reviews, it is important for organisations to understand the reasons for leaving reviews. Here, are three reasons for why people love to tell others what they think:
#1 Helping others – Often, people write reviews to help others. As a customer themselves, people value reviews & ratings to help them make a buying decision; making them feel valued as a member of the community.
#2 Rewards – The internet has become a place where anyone can say anything, anywhere they want. People are using the likes of social media e.g. Facebook, Twitter and other methods such as blogs/ vlogs to tell others what they think and felt. Therefore companies expect more from their customers asking them to like pages, share posts etc. resulting to driving sales up and expanding their target market. Customers are now aware of this subtle marketing method, therefore expect something in return for giving their opinions.
#3 Fame – The most common and obvious reason for customers voicing their opinions and rushing to tell other people what they think is the fame. The internet now has the power to get a comment/picture/post viral within minutes. Whether that be a heart-warming or comedic customer review, anything has the opportunity to go viral. One of the best examples of this is ‘The Dress’. In 2015, a picture of a dress posted on Tumblr went viral as it revealed differences in human colour perception which was the subject of an ongoing scientific investigation in neuroscience and vision science since. The confusion arose when some people thought #thedress was black and blue and others thought it was white and gold. This resulted to a significant drive sales of the dress.
Part of the joy of customers telling people what they think means that people share content that catches their eye; whether that be the unusual or the amusing; if something goes viral, you’re effectively seen as ‘famous’. Also, traffic is being sent to a business’s site and while people are there, they may be tempted to look around; resulting to an increase in sales.
If a business wants to digitally market itself effectively and get more people to be talking about them, in a positive way of course, the first step is to find out why their customers rate and review and then they must find a way to get them to do it more i.e. how to get them interested. BUT remember, this only works in their favour if the reviews are positive.
References
Chen, P., Dhanasobhon, S., and Smith, M. (2008). All Reviews Are Not Created Equal: The Disaggregate Impact of Reviews on Sales on Amazon.com, Carnegie Mellon University
Clemons, E., Gao, G., and Hitt, L. (2006) When Online Reviews Meet Hyperdifferentiation: A Study of the Craft Beer Industry, Journal of Management Information Systems (23:2), pp. 149-171.
Dabholkar, P. (2006). Factors Influencing Consumer Choice of a ‘Rating Web Site’: An Experimental Investigation of an Online Interactive Decision Aid, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice (14:4), pp. 259-273.
Digital Visitor (2016) What’s in it for me why customers leave reviews? [Online] <http://digitalvisitor.com/whats-in-it-for-me-why-customers-leave-reviews/> [Accessed 25th April 2016]
Facebook (2016) Facebook Community Standards [Online] <https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards> [Accessed 25th April 2016]
Facebook Newsroom (2016) Our Mission [Online] <http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/> [Accessed 27th April 2016]
Mudambi, S, M. & Schuff, D. (2010) What makes a helpful online review? A study of customer reviews on Amazon.com, MIS Quarterly Vol 34 No 1
Travel Post (2016) Homepage [Online] <www.travelpost.com> [Accessed 26th April 2016]
Telegraph (2015) Dressgate: If you saw THAT dress as white your brain was working overtime [Online] <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/dressgate-if-you-saw-that-dress-as-white-your-brain-was-working/> [Accessed 26th April 2016]
USA Today (2015) Yelp falls 9% as Facebook tests local business reviews [Online] < http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/12/15/facebook-local-businesses-rating-yelp-angies-list/77364056/> [Accessed 25th April 2016]