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There's little doubt that customer reviews are a mainstay in today's retail environment, often used by consumers as a key decision-making metric when eyeing up a new purchase.
Research reinforces this premise: According to a recent consumer study from AMC Global, consumer reviews were among the top two decision-influencing factors (with product reviews being described as "table stakes" by EVP Miriam Konz); and Retail Dive's Dani James cited Bazaarvoice research suggesting that "over half of shoppers cite real customer reviews as the biggest factor in their final purchase decisions."
However, there's a bit of nuance to consider in this equation -- AMC Global noted a preference for "verified purchaser reviews" versus "incentivized or promotional reviews" coming from shoppers, while Bazaarvoice, by contrast, took the position that even incentivized reviews weren't necessarily coming from a place of inauthenticity.
“We encourage our reviewers who participate in sampling campaigns to leave their real, honest opinion,” Bazaarvoice stated.
“Good or bad. They are not penalized from participating in another campaign if they leave a negative or low-star review. This ensures that the [user-generated content] our clients receive is authentic, trustworthy and useful for those who will read them," it added.
Retail, Especially Beauty, May Have an Ongoing 'Love Affair' With Incentivized Reviews -- For Good or Ill
And as James outlined, there's a bit of a double-edged sword in play when it comes to retail's "love affair" with incentivized reviews -- particularly in the beauty segment, which heavily relies on these. While incentivized reviews quickly pump the numbers up on a product, offering a sense of safety and trust to potential buyers, the question of whether or not these reviews are entirely ethical (via score inflation) is left on the table.
James cited Professor of Marketing at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Kaitlin Woolley, on the subject. Woolley argued that two primary outcomes often emerge from the proliferation of incentivized reviews.
“One is [that] they increase the volume, like the number of people reviewing,” she told the outlet.
"[Second,] the incentive itself changes the content of what people write and then also the rating that they apply to it,” she added, perhaps going against Bazaarvoice's position.
James provided two examples, using red-hot beauty retailer Sephora as a case study. When looking at Sephora's BB and CC cream makeup category, across 16 listings, nearly two-thirds (19,866 out of a bit more than 30,000 of listings, as of Sept. 22) of customer reviews were marked as incentivized. Concerning the eye primer makeup category, more than three-quarters of the ~37,000 reviews were labeled as incentivized.
Caroline Weintraub, vice president at True Beauty Ventures, spoke of the reality concerning the current state of customer reviews in beauty retail.
“Although it is better to have nonincentivized reviews, that often takes longer to build, and brands want the launch to be successful out of the gate,” she said.
“For smaller or emerging brands, incentivized reviews have become increasingly important. When you are competing with legacy players that already have thousands of reviews, launching with a ‘zero review’ product page puts you at a disadvantage... Some retailers even connect brands with approved third-party platforms that help seed products and capture reviews, so there is an implicit expectation that brands will invest in this area,” she added.
As for the consumer take? There could be a cautionary tale brewing. With James pointing to two bulky threads in which redditors on the r/Sephora subreddit flamed the sheer mass and nature of incentivized reviews, a third thread (titled "878 reviews and not a single one is verified, only 18 non-incentivized") also provided a highly upvoted nugget of shopper opinion.
"Brands really do themselves a disservice when they allow for so many incentivized reviews. There are so many products I won’t give another look due to the amount of incentivized versus non-incentivized reviews there are," one user wrote.