Susan Mudambi, professor emeritus of marketing at Temple’s Fox School of Business, co-authored a commentary in the journal Nature Human Behaviour about consumer trust in online review platforms.
Susan Mudambi researches marketing strategy, online customer reviews, business-to-business branding and the role of technology in marketing.
Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg
For many online shoppers, reviews can help decide whether they click "add to cart" or keep scrolling.
A new commentary by Susan Mudambi, professor emeritus of marketing at Temple’s Fox School of Business, identifies three types of online reviews that cannot be trusted to provide objective evaluations.
“I think online reviews are here to stay,” she said. “It’s just really up to both the platforms and the consumers to figure out how to know when to trust them and when to be more skeptical.”
The analysis, “Online consumer reviews can no longer be trusted,” co-authored by David Schuff, professor of commerce at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, was published July 13 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
Summarizing years of Mudambi and Schuff’s research on online reviews, the piece argues that online review systems are increasingly vulnerable to manipulation. The central message is not that reviews are worthless, but that consumers, platforms and businesses need to become more sophisticated in evaluating them.
Mudambi notes that shopping behavior has fundamentally shifted toward researching—and often purchasing—online, with customer reviews serving as an essential part of how consumers make decisions. She adds that they were once a source of sincere advice, but now online review platforms have led to new forms of disingenuous behavior that may hurt consumers.
The three types of reviews that cannot be trusted to provide objective information that Mudambi outlines are: fake reviews, humorous reviews and review bombing.
Fake reviews can be produced in a variety of ways, notes Mudambi, and are hard to detect. They can include reviews written by people who have never used the product. Others may be paid to endorse or disparage a product or participate in campaigns targeting competitors. Generative AI adds to the challenge by making it easier to produce convincing fake reviews at scale.
Humorous reviews can be satirical or exaggerated and do not provide objective information to evaluate a product. Often, the writer of the review did not intend to mislead consumers but rather just wanted to be funny. Mudambi recommends that consumers watch out for reviews that make hyperbolic claims and appear to be written purely for entertainment.
The third category is review bombing, a newer phenomenon intended to damage a product’s commercial success. Applying mostly to entertainment products like movies, television and video games, the review content is often politically or culturally motivated and written by people who have never experienced the product, such as criticizing the casting of a movie before it has even been released.
While consumers can take steps to evaluate reviews more critically, Mudambi says the responsibility doesn’t rest solely with shoppers.
“Consumers are seeking some reassurances that the platforms have their interests in mind,” she said.
She says that review platforms can help build trust by continuing to improve how they identify and address misleading reviews.
“When reading reviews, shoppers should also think about the motivation for why someone would write an online review. Did the writer get an incentive to review the product or are they simply being altruistic?”
Mudambi refers to all three forms of review manipulation as “review platform appropriation"—using online review tools for purposes other than those for which they were intended. She offers advice on how to combat the negative consequences of review platform appropriation because consumers may lose trust in online review platforms.
“Consumers should think, ‘do you want to trust one persuasive person or do you want to trust the wisdom of the crowds?’ I would always encourage reading both one-star and five-star reviews to reassure yourself that you’re buying the right product. Look at both ends.”
Mudambi and Schuff have been studying online consumer reviews for more than a decade. In 2010, they co-authored a landmark study titled “What Makes a Helpful Online Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com.” The paper is among the most cited at No. 11 in MIS Quarterly history and helped pioneer the academic study of digital consumer feedback and analysis of how product types and review styles influence perceived “helpfulness.”
As online commerce continues to grow, preserving trust in review systems becomes increasingly important. The solution, Mudambi argues, is not to abandon reviews, but for consumers to become more discerning and for platforms to better detect and manage misleading content.
“You just have to learn to be savvy shoppers,” she said. “Savvy shoppers, not just of products, but of information, and reviews are a form of information.”