“59% of customers believe that reviews influence their buying behavior.”
(Xu et. al, 2015)
….You can only imagine the influence reviews have on product sales and what a valuable asset they are to businesses!
Especially for experience goods, the generation of reviews ensures quality and provides social control. Throughout the past weeks, the elective on ‘customer-centric digital commerce’ has shed light on the underlying motivations of users to post reviews, the possibilities to structure them and how (not) to respond to them. We have realized that format and style can have significant effects on consumers’ perceptions and buying behavior.
Were you popular in high school? If yes, do you still experience the perks you had back then? Can you still sit at the best table, and receive higher grades because you’re the teacher’s pet?
Probably not, because as you’re thinking, we’re living in the real world now. However, in the digital world the high school popularity contest is still relevant. A social media analytics company called Klout tells you exactly how popular you are based on a score ranging from one to a hundred. I thought it would be fun to check my Klout score but the ‘fun’ ended soon – I’m down to a score of 10. Of course I only have myself to blame, as I haven’t tweeted anything in four years and my Facebook profile only exists out of tags and a couple birthday congratulatory posts. Linking my WordPress account surprisingly also didn’t do the trick for at least moving my score more to the average.
Consumer Value Creation 