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Media intelligence practices and online reviews

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Media intelligence : Analyzing how your company name or brand rates in online reviews, vs. those of your competitors’, most definitely belongs on your media intelligence to-do list.

Or does it?

media-intelligence-bell-curveThe New York Times article, “On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic But They’re Not Very Critical” reports that the average online review rating is 4.3 stars out of 5. That’s of course far away from being even remotely close to the “bell curve”. How come the average distribution of statistical data is so far off? Does media intelligence practices play a role here?

The article seems to indicate that yes, they do. Printer paper, boots and dog food in particular have bloated online reputations and the same can be said for hotels being reviewed on TripAdvisor.com.

However, media intelligence practices, such as a manager’s puffing up the average rating of this own product or service, is not the only factor. Someone is also minding the store. Several independent Amazon reviewers for example, suspect that the online megastore is involved in selective review vetting.

Translation: Negative reviews are simply deleted in order to sell more products. Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, has found that ca. 65% of word-of-mouth reviews are positive, whereas only 8% are negative!

At the end of the day the question then becomes how “good” is a good review. Do you have the strength to give a 4.3 review its real (average) value in your media intelligence matrix?

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Comments

One Response to “Media intelligence practices and online reviews”
  1. corneliapiper says:
    October 7, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Ummm, nooo, I don’t have the strenght to impose a revised 4.3 median on all the online reviews I read. Are you serious? Jeeez, shocking. I’m never ever buying anything on Ebay or Amazon again. Ever 8-)

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