Three Things to Know About Assessing Customer Reviews

How should companies effectively use or respond to an unwieldy array of customer opinions? While consumer feedback can be invaluable, three recent research articles suggest that it may also be influenced by gender, niche preferences, or sky-high expectations, complicating whether and how companies should respond.

1. Not all users post critical reviews. A study of 1.2 billion online reviews across five major platforms identified a consistent and meaningful gender gap. Women’s ratings are, on average, more favorable than men’s, despite little difference in both groups’ “real” attitudes. The researchers found that women are less likely to share negative reviews when dissatisfied — likely due to societal gender expectations. Women are concerned about possible backlash: being negatively evaluated themselves after posting an unfavorable review.

Notably, however, when users were first prompted to report their opinions anonymously and only then asked to submit an online review, the gender rating gap disappeared. The researchers suggest that businesses could encourage women to share their opinions more openly by introducing a similar process.

2. Adopting user community feedback can backfire with mainstream users. Product developers can gain valuable insight by consulting user communities, but recent research finds that acting on such community feedback can sometimes undermine commercial success. An analysis of video games whose development was influenced by feedback from users who received early access found that the preferences voluntarily shared by self-selected community members can differ greatly from those of more mainstream consumers.

These unrepresentative preferences are particularly salient in lower-priced games or those with niche appeal, suggesting that companies should ignore community feedback for such products until and unless they attract more broadly representative users.

3. Expert ratings can inflate consumer expectations — and deflate reviews. In the prestigious Michelin Guide, experts award star ratings to denote restaurant quality. Favorable expert opinions — more stars — do benefit sales, but a recent study suggests a mixed effect on diner perceptions. Researchers compared reviews by diners of Michelin-starred eateries versus a control group of fine-dining restaurants on the TripAdvisor platform and found a marked “expectation effect.”

Restaurants with multiple stars can find it harder to meet the inflated expectations of customers, who in turn lower their ratings when those expectations aren’t met. While an increase in stars showed no impact on consumer ratings, a decrease in stars improved ratings as consumers became less demanding.

Together, these research findings demonstrate that interpreting and acting on customer feedback can be a tricky and uneven endeavor. The customer, it seems, is not always right.