Fake Reviews in E-Commerce
As mentioned in “The Ease of Online Shopping”, there is a plethora of products you can order online, but another interesting aspect of the digital age (and e-commerce) is that you can assess whether a product, a restaurant or a hotel is good by looking at reviews. No wonder there are so many comparison-shopping websites and apps such as Tripadvisor. However, a big caveat is the fact that too many of comparison-shopping websites and e-commerce companies, like Amazon, allow for virtually anyone to post a review. Therefore, as a classic consequence of Digital Media, we end up with way too much information, a lot of which may be poor information. Nevertheless, online reviews are of extreme importance in e-commerce. According to Pattern, an e-commerce consulting firm, an increase of one star in Amazon’s rating system corresponds to a twenty six percent increase in sales.