The Need For Online Comments

But why do people leave comments in the first place?

When you think about your own experiences you can start to imagine a few ideas. One is that you were driven to do it. It was a drive inside you or you were incentivised to do so (however, we will find out that giving an incentive to create a review is very bad).

According to one theory (of social exchange) (https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=98161) there are 4 reasons:

first is the pleasure gained from helping others;
the second is the pleasure gained by influencing the enterprise;
the third is obtaining self-improvement and
the fourth is economic rewards

Each can be thought about easily:

Helping can be good and bad. You are telling people about a wonderful product or you are telling them to stay away

Mercedes was going to build a new car and wanted feedback and comments. They targeted loyal customers and told them so. They were inundated with feedback- which incidentally generated a huge a mount of sales for the new car

When you leave a comment, sometimes you get feedback from the community or the creator. This 2 way “conversation” generated good will and more comments. It also generated more positive comments and more chance that comments will be of quality to that audience

Economic rewards can also be links back to your site, more recognition, actual rewards (when stated). I know some websites that are inundated with products asking for reviews. The modern wave of “influencers” comment on their products through video or blog posts (Grover & Goyal, 2020, A Study On Consumer Buying Behaviours Based On Customers Online Reviews)

What is important is the “review content” portion.

Shop reputation refers to the content evaluation and star ratings given by the consumers after the purchase. Content evaluation may involve the comment of quality, price, service attitude, logistics and so on.

The reviews containing pictures reflect the real quality of the goods, such as colour, specifications and inconsistencies or the high quality, good experience reviews. The picture reviews reduce the consumer’s risk as picture reviews indicate the real buying behaviour. Some studies show that the influence of positive reviews replaces the influence of cumulative reviews. But another study found that the quantity of online reviews affect the willingness of consumers to buy on the network. What we have found is that it is a bit of both.

One study suggests that two-thirds of consumers (68%) are willing to pay up to 15% more for the same product or service if they are assured they will have a better experience, giving less importance to other factors like price.

So what do the pros think? These are the sellers who are in the trenches daily.