With e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart giving out huge discounts on products during sales, people across India are finding more reasons than ever before to continue or try out online shopping. One of the advantages people get while using online shopping is product reviews from people who have bought the item and a recent survey from LocalCircles has found that Indians think customer reviews are positively biased.
The company surveyed over 33,000 people from more than 220 districts across India. From the results, they were able to find that customers did not feel satisfied with the product even if it had high ratings on e-commerce platforms and this happened on an average of twice a year for a majority of respondents.
According to LocalCircles, this is happening because people review only when they face a negative experience with the product and sellers exploit this nature of consumers by flooding positive reviews from known people.
“Consumers by design tend to rate and review more when they have a negative experience and hence the survey finding is a bit contrary to this. If a seller gets related parties like family, friends or even hired marketing agencies to rate and review their listings, they can boost the rating of the product.”, says LocalCircles.
Despite the reliability, a significant 50% of the respondents said they do check the ratings and reviews of the product before proceeding to buy. This is followed by 35% of people who check the feedback added by people sometimes. From this, it is evident that no matter how biased the reviews are, people often find themselves looking at it to judge the product.
Shockingly, almost 50% of people agreed their negative reviews on products were either ignored and not published at all or were sometimes not published. On the flip side, 27% of people admitted that their reviews get published as it is.
“If the negative reviews and ratings are not censored and if the seller influenced reviews and ratings are minimised, it will address this area of customer dissatisfaction,” notes LocalCircles.
To get around this issue, 85% of the participants agreed that only ratings and reviews from verified purchases should be allowed in e-commerce platforms for making the review system more reliable and trustworthy.
So, how has your experience been in online shopping so far? Let us know in the comments.
