3 ms·

The Anna Karenina principle [0] of reviews. "All 5-star reviews are alike; each 1-star review is unhappy in its own way." I love it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.

• klipt 7y ago
  But a business can just as easily pay for fake negative reviews of competitors.
  • not_a_cop75 7y ago
    While this is true, being so specific about something negative that someone calls them out is much more risky than the useless 1 star rating with comment "product did not work as expected". Low quality comments are almost never considered valid by those that pour over the comments.
  • usrusr 7y ago
    But that could only ever be worthwhile in markets with very few competitors. But when there is only a low number of competitors, customers usually have better ways to form an opinion than internet reviews. The only exceptions are cases where customers are faced with a wide range of vendors, but only tiny, well-delineated subsets are in actual competition. Restaurants serving travelers in a small town would be an example.