![]() “The average percentage of fake reviews on the listings would range from 20% to 70% in some instances.” Pressure mounts from FTCĪnother dynamic throughout all of this is the recent appointment of Lina Khan, an associate law professor at Columbia Law School with expertise in antitrust and competition, as chairperson to the FTC. “The average Fakespot grade for these companies is a C grade for thousands of listings,” said Khalifah in an interview with Tom’s Guide. Given the deluge of products, it’s not too surprising that sellers started looking to other means to pump up five-star ratings.Īccording to Saoud Khalifah, CEO of Fakespot, a browser extension and app that points out fake reviews, of the companies mentioned above, a huge percentage of reviews were either fake or coerced. “Most sellers realized acquiring reviews was a golden ticket.” “In early 2012, the Amazon catalog grew too big, and the only way to get to the top of search results was to prove to the algorithm that your product was the best,” said chief executive of Marketplace Pulse Juozas Kaziukėnas in an interview with the Wall Street Journal back in 2018. And a great way to gauge if a product is good are five-star ratings. Considering that Amazon has over 12 million products on its marketplace, landing at the top of search results can mean tremendous sales.Īmazon’s algorithm works to push the best products in front of consumers. Like Apple, Amazon occupies a very small club of $1 trillion dollar companies. Given that 89% of consumers are likely to buy at Amazon over other online sites, there’s a lot of money to be had when landing on the first search page. “Communications between Amazon employees viewed by Recode also appear to expose an inconsistent punishment system in which employees need special approval for suspending certain sellers because of their sales numbers, while some merchants are able to keep selling products to Amazon customers despite multiple policy violations and warnings.” Gaming the system ![]() ![]() Vox’s Recode actually acquired some internal messaging and found that for some of its largest sellers, the company essentially let bad practices slide. Some believe that bogus reviews have been an open secret at the e-commerce giant for a while, and that it wasn’t until regulatory pressure by the FTC did the company begin acting. Still, all of these brands were some of Amazon’s top sellers. ![]()
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