First it was likes and views which were brought to drive brand campaigns and then came reviews. These are also called fake in nature and are often found on e-commerce websites. The question is why are these reviews bothersome? The answer is pretty simple, consumers often read reviews on e-commerce sites or online sites ranging from Flipkart to Amazon, Nykaa, Ajio, among others before buying a product, especially if it is being bought for the first time. So why are these dangerous for platforms? To begin with, an increase in fake reviews downgrade the brand value of a platform and eventually lead to decline in sales. “Nothing is sacrosanct anymore. If news itself can be made up, all else can. Planted reviews, bought reviews and BOT made reviews are the bane of the e-commerce company. This is going to rob e-commerce of its credibility. It will, over a period of time, push customers into the real world if they see, touch, smell, taste and buy formats,” Harish Bijoor, business and brand-strategy specialist and founder, Harish Bijoor Consults, told BrandWagon Online.
One of the recent surveys by Scams.info – a fake review tracking platform revealed that book reviews are the most untrustworthy on e-commerce. Almost two in five (37.2%) book ratings are fraudulent, the most of any product category. After analysing bestsellers, experts further uncovered that for 59% of products, over 40% of ratings were fake. For one in 20 books, over 90% of ratings were illegitimate. Moreover, baby products also receive an extreme amount of fake reviews. Over a third (34.8%) of ratings on baby range are artificial, and one in 16 products had 90% of reviews determined to be fake. Reviews for high-value items such as large appliances and computers and accessories are also untrustworthy, at 33.6% and 32.1% fake rating respectively.
Impact on brand image
90% of shoppers’ buying decisions are influenced by online reviews, as per a study conducted by Cornell University. So, fake reviews can be extremely damaging to a brand’s reputation. The study further revealed that 95% of consumers suspect censorship or false reviews are at play when bad reviews are nowhere to be found online. However, according to Quartz India, 56% of online shoppers don’t trust product reviews, 65% don’t trust product ratings, and 72% of Indian e-commerce buyers are weary of incorrect information and believe fake reviews have become the norm.
Industry experts believe that the majority of customers rely on online reviews to make informed buying decisions. Fake reviews can be of two types, positive and negative. While positive fake reviews are built by brands in order to highlight particular features of a product, negative fake reviews are given by competitor brands to promote their products in comparison with competitor products. “There are two types of fake reviews which pose a challenge to brands. First, when the brand pays the reviewer to post positive reviews, it might lead to a short-term boost in sales, but it risks eroding the trust of our customers once they discover the lack of authenticity. Second, when the competitor brand pays the reviewer to post negative reviews, it can tarnish an entire brand image and dissuade potential customers from purchasing based on misleading information,” Riddhi Sharma, founder and CEO, BabyOrgano added.
For Vinod Cookware, the average customer retention rate is about 25-28% for e-commerce, fake reviews have the potential to pull this down to single digits if left unchecked. “The return rate due to fake reviews depends on the customer experience at every touch point with the brand online. We ensure that the customer has a high-quality and informative experience, whether it be from our product listing on our website or e-commerce to our after-sales support,” Sunil Agarwal, director, Vinod Cookware, noted.
Meanwhile, some industry experts believe that the repeat customer rate shows a fluctuating pattern rather than a linear trend amid concerns about fake reviews. This fluctuation is attributed to the influence of prominent reviews, which can vary from month to month. “The gradual shift in consumer behaviour underscores a significant trend. As e-commerce platforms continue to expand, particularly in markets like India, the need for effective measures to combat fake reviews becomes paramount,” Priyadarshini Krishnan, founder, ROOT and SOIL, explained.
Preventive measures
Interestingly, in a blog by Amazon released in June 2023, the e-commerce giant claimed that in 2022 125 million customers contributed nearly 1.5 billion reviews and ratings to its stores, providing future Amazon shoppers with transparent insights into the products they were considering. The company further talked about it. “Our goal is to ensure that every review in Amazon’s stores is trustworthy and reflects customers’ actual experiences. For that reason, Amazon welcomes authentic reviews—whether positive or negative—but strictly prohibits fake reviews that intentionally mislead customers by providing information that is not impartial, authentic, or intended for that product or service,” the company stated in the blog. Furthermore, it claimed to invest significant resources to proactively stop fake reviews including machine learning models that analyse thousands of data points to detect risk, including relations to other accounts, sign-in activity, review history, and other indications of unusual behaviour and expert investigators that use sophisticated fraud-detection tools to analyse and prevent fake reviews from ever appearing in the store.
For BOULT, when it comes to fake reviews, a brand which is customer centric and interacts directly with them on a day-to-day basis, it is a major problem. Thus, brand has strict guidelines when it comes to looking at the reviews that are posted on our platforms or the third-party websites. Some of the trends that the compnay have seen over the years of operating in space includes misleading positive reviews, negative fake reviews, brand reputation and customer trust, impact on customer decision process, and regulatory and market response. “We want to ensure that none of our customers feel underwhelmed by the experience, we have a dedicated e-commerce team which constantly tracks back all the reviews to their purchase point to ensure that they have been verified. Once verified, then only the reviews reflect on our D2C platforms,” Varun Gupta, co-founder, BOULT added.
Experts opine that fake reviews can be easily spotted. One needs to be wary of overly positive or generic reviews that lack details, especially those originating from inactive accounts. Besides, other mechanisms can also be implemented to fight this. “While a complete shift back to retail stores is a long shot, such incidents will make consumers savvier online shoppers. To combat this, brands and platforms can implement stricter verification processes, incentivise genuine feedback through loyalty programs, and report suspicious activity in the spirit of transparency. E-commerce platforms must place detection algorithms and hold sellers accountable, even blacklist repeat offenders,” Krishna Iyer, director – marketing, MullenLowe Lintas Group, explained.
For brands, it is the platform’s responsibility to ensure the integrity of reviews and ratings systems. Therefore, it ultimately becomes crucial for platforms to implement robust measures to detect and prevent such fraudulent activities, safeguarding the trust and reliability of their marketplace. “When competition brands resort to posting fake negative reviews to sabotage their rivals, it becomes imperative for the affected brand to raise this issue with the relevant stakeholders of the e-commerce platform. If platforms fail to take adequate action to address this issue, it ultimately undermines the fairness and credibility of the entire marketplace,” Mohit Anand, co-founder and CEO, Secure Connection, opined.