The fake product reviews posed a serious problem with the festive season knocking at the door. The growth of eCommerce has increased the sale of products online in leaps and bounds. So are the consumer reviews, which go hand in hand with the high revenue generated eCommerce sites.
People across the world trust the seller by reading the reviews posted and buy the product online. But, the fake reviews threat has left the people to rethink the reliability of the unidentified reviews. The term "astroturfing" is used to illustrate the act of fake review posting online by pretending to be the real customer.
The Forbes news reports, the government has taken necessary measures to bring down such cases of astroturfing, yet the customer might be manipulated before the festive season and must be aware. In the 2013-14 festive seasons, a data from 1000 shoppers was collected by a software company named Baynote. The analysis revealed that around 48% of the customers were inclined to buy the product after going through the rating and reviews while shopping online during the holidays. It is obvious for the retailers to increase their sales through fake product reviews and take advantage of the holiday period.
These fake reviews are posted online with the help of PR Agencies, advertising firms, and even outsourced to the freelancers in return of few instant bucks. They pose to be the happy consumers who have used the products and completely satisfied to recommend others on retailer's website or eCommerce sites.
According to the CBS News reports, in the first half of the year the online retailers with Amazon.com faced a legal inquiry and 1000 people or more were sued for posting fake reviews online for merely $5. Not just the Amazon, Trip Advisor, Ebay, and other online sites faced similar customer complaints about the fake reviews issue. In spite of the legal steps, the fake reviews are still persistently multiplying. A request to Amazon for a comment has not been reverted yet.
The fake product reviews have taken a centre stage in recent times with almost 90% of the online customers using reviews to take a decision on their activity to shop, eat, travel, and what not. It's high time to fight back against these fake reviews and judge the right ones.
Dylan Hoeffler, the manager of fraud and authenticity at Austin's Bazaarvoice said, "Online shopping is a tens, hundreds of billion dollar a year business. That's the motivation right there. People are trying to manipulate purchases of other users. If they feel like they can manipulate a purchase, they're going to post fake reviews to do that.", according toKEYETV.
In order to differentiate and benefit from the right reviews, you may read many reviews on various sites for the product and give more importance to the purchases that are verified. You may also check whether the website offers public legitimacy policy with transparent content, unedited reviews and all positively highlighted feature review.
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