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November 25, 2024
Are Online Customer Reviews Amazon’s Secret Sauce?
While Amazon often gets credit for its low prices, extensive selection, and speedy delivery, a new holiday ad campaign starring actor Adam Driver highlights the benefits Amazon’s five-star customer reviews add to the shopping experience.
Driver, described as a “real serious actor,” reimagines memorable reviews in the style of a one-man show. In the initial three videos, the acclaimed actor, best known for his roles in the “Star Wars” franchise and the HBO series “Girls,” reads real-life reviews left by Amazon customers, including ones dedicated to a plush seal, a Dutch oven, and — in a minute-plus ad — a banana slicer that has found viral success over the years.
“What these reviews have shown us is that some of our best writers are our customers, and we love how this campaign brings them into the spotlight,” said Jo Shoesmith, Amazon’s global chief creative officer, in a statement.
David Cohen wrote for Adweek, “Funny reviews on Amazon have developed a cult following of sorts, and even spawned their own community on Reddit, so the e-commerce giant decided to hop on the bandwagon, with help from a two-time Academy Award-nominated actor.”
The ads are running across social media and online platforms through Dec. 2. Amazon is also running a broader sentimental Christmas ad featuring a theater manager’s hidden vocal talent being discovered to the 1960s hit, “What The World Needs Now.”
Amazon also ran ads featuring direct quotes from a review during the 2023 holiday season. The hero spot, “Tent,” spotlighted a pregnant mother who, in an attempt to create peace between her two young sons, buys them tents on Amazon. The ad also features her actual review: “Bought a tent for their beds … Gave them a new world.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been credited with pioneering online customer reviews. Founded as an online bookseller, Amazon was able to offer a larger selection of books than any local bookstore but crowdsourced customer reviews to make up for the recommendations customers received from bookstore employees. The move was seen as controversial at the time because Amazon declined to hide negative reviews.
Bezos reportedly said, “When we pioneered customer reviews, it was incredibly controversial. I got letters from publishers saying, ‘You don’t understand your business. You make money when you sell things. Take down those negative customer reviews.’ We’ve never done anything of real value that wasn’t at least a little bit controversial when we did it. But if you want to be a pioneer, you have to be comfortable being misunderstood.”
Studies have since shown that negative reviews give credibility to positive reviews and bolster confidence in purchasing decisions.
However, the worth of user-generated reviews is still often questioned. Kenji ROI estimates that an average of only 1% to 2% of purchases on Amazon lead to a review. Fake online reviews are also found to be fairly common as well as hard to detect and remove.
A recent survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers from Reputation, a customer-feedback platform, found 53% of respondents expressing fear that AI could compromise the trustworthiness of online reviews. However, 77% of respondents still stated that they find online reviews to be “mostly” trustworthy. Also, 54% put their trust in online reviews first to guide their purchasing decisions, outweighing the opinions of friends and family (24%), company claims (18%), social media influencers (2%), and media reviews (2%).
Discussion Questions
Why is Amazon highlighting reviews rather than deals, fast delivery, and other factors in a holiday campaign?
How critical are customer reviews and recommendations to the Amazon shopping experience and the platform’s overall success?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Lisa Goller
B2B Content Strategist
Mark Ryski
Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation
Gail Rodwell-Simon
Strategic Retail Advisor, SPARX Advisory Group
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Reviews are one of many things that create success for Amazon. Reviews incentivize sellers to treat customers well, they act provide shoppers with guidance when buying remotely, and they give feedback to Amazon which uses them to produce a better shopping experience. It’s win-win-win. That said, are reviews the main reason people use Amazon? No, not even close. Reliability, super-fast delivery, a vast assortment and good prices are all higher up the batting order from our data.
Amazon is highlighting customer reviews this holiday season to emphasize two major advantages over rivals like Temu and Shein: brand trust and a massive crowd of loyal customers.
Customer reviews differentiate and elevate the Amazon shopping experience with unredacted feedback from real shoppers. This transparency deepens brand trust.
To the extent that any online retailer can (should and probably already has) incorporate(d) such in their offering(s) I can’t see how this is any kind of secret weapon. Far more important IMHO is how rating are presented: I don’t want blather, I want credibility…give me a 4.3 or 4.4 w/ plenty of thoughful comments over a (straight) 5.0 any day.
By highlighting their reviews, Amazon adds credibility and encourages shopping, especially for shoppers who haven’t shopped online, or hardly shop online. Customer reviews are critical, despite the credibility hits they rightly take from time-to-time. Amazon has a good idea of which reviews are likely authentic and likely fake. I have little doubt that Amazon studies reviews and customer feedback carefully, and then uses the insights to craft new messages that will resonate.
Although Amazon reviews aren’t the secret sauce, they do help to attract a significant number of customers. Amazon’s verification system, which verifies the reviewer bought the item, helps to establish credibility.
In the past, Amazon dominated customer reviews, and they still are the leader. However, customer reviews are now widely available on other platforms.
Amazon is geared to close a sale after customers read reviews. It works well.
I think that reviews have become more and more important in the online world especially since customers cannot touch, feel or engage with the product directly. Amazon goes a step further and allows customers to filter product by number of stars. As a consumer, I find this very helpful.
Ratings & Reviews, as a part of a larger User Generated Content strategy, as a critical element of success for any modern retailer…not just Amazon. Having created the concept in the early days of eCommerce earns them a rightful place of honor in retailing history, but does not necessarily provide them with an unchallenged pathway to success in #Holiday2024.
#UGC is a critical driver of SEO benefit for a product detail pages, a critical driver of CRO, and a valuable source of product feedback for both the retailer and the brand owner. Given the sheer volume of UGC that Amazon collects, it is certainly a valuable asset to be leveraged all year long…including the holidays. But, so can all retailers and their consumer brand partners, provided that they have a cohesive and comprehensive UGC strategy.
I see Prime as Amazon’s secret sauce. Reviews are terrific but at this stage in Amazon’s maturity, reviews help shoppers select product A over B. Or in the case of marketplace sellers, seller A over seller B. Prime has made Amazon the ecommerce platform of first choice.
While reviews appear most places now days, Amazon serve a strong purpose for shoppers when researching products (and I also like the messages about products that are returned versus kept). But, in as beneficial as reviews are, they are not the primary or secondary reasons for shopping Amazon as compared to price, delivery and variety of items available.
Amazon has (finally) tapped into their own branded pot of liquid gold. Their unedited customer reviews are one of the top traffic drivers to the site. Consumers know what to expect during the holiday season: Black Friday Deals, Hot Holiday Sales, and deep discounts. Every retailer will have this. What every retailer will not have is Adam Driver reading real customer reviews that make even a banana slicer sound like must see tv. Smart move by Amazon to find and leverage an enticing point-of-difference in the midst of a sea of sameness this holiday season.
Reviews are only one piece of the puzzle. I conducted digital shop along research and everyone talked about the reviews on Amazon, but they served different purposes. Some only read negative reviews believing those were the only real ones and to understand if the negatives were truly a reason against buying or if the person reviewing just didn’t know what they were doing. Others only looked for long reviews, if there were no reviews, some refused to consider a product. While the way they interacted with the reviews varied, the one common thread was that reviews brought them to Amazon, and typically multiple pages. Once you’re on Amazon, they make it really easy to buy something with reviews, recommended items and one click order, fast delivery and free returns, etc. Reviews serve as the engagement driver and working in concert with all the other elements help move the buyer from consideration to purchase.
Reviews are not even the tie breaker for Amazon. Amazon makes its differential advantage in terms of pricing, assortment & delivery. Prime is a primary competitive advantage. Reviews help when you get to the site by reducing cognitive dissonance, but they are not the prime (no pun intended) reason for shopping on Amazon.
Amazon’s success isn’t just about reviews, though they play a crucial role. While reviews help build trust, guide shoppers, and improve the platform, they aren’t the main draw. People choose Amazon primarily for its reliability, lightning-fast delivery, incredible product variety, and competitive prices.
This holiday season, Amazon is shining a spotlight on customer reviews to underscore two key advantages over competitors like Temu and Shein: trust and loyalty. By showcasing honest, unfiltered feedback from real shoppers, Amazon strengthens its brand trust. This transparency sets it apart and elevates the overall shopping experience.
Customer reviews are the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth; they generate trust because they come from real people. While every retailer has customer reviews these days, Amazon was the first. They’ve become synonymous with their brand. Using them as a focal point of their campaigns differentiates Amazon from the hundreds of other retail promotions and speaks to a core aspect of their brand.
Like customer reviews, recommendations have also set Amazon apart from its competitors, first introduced in 1998 using collaborative filtering. Both features have evolved beyond Amazon’s platform differentiators and have become a part of the Amazon experience and brand.