We have bugs.
No, not the software coding kind, but the creeping six-legged variety; the kind you find in your bathtub as you enter for the morning shower. Thankfully, we don’t have many of them yet, but with spring already here, it’s just a matter of time before they multiply.
Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to go far to find an exterminator. On Saturdays, my neighborhood often has door-to-door solicitors looking for additional work and, at one point, a pest control service salesman had stopped by, card in hand. After discussing insect-killing strategies and up-front pricing, I hired the company on the spot. They had impressed me, and although I was a bit hasty in my decision, I figured that there was little difference between one exterminator and another. As long as the chemicals worked on the silverfish in the bathtub and not on us, I would be satisfied.
When I told my story, my wife asked me if I was sure I had made the right choice. After all, I could have found a provider at any one of the online review services and be able to read the comments of thousands of satisfied customers. Instead, I was hiring based on a convincing sales pitch and not on thorough research.
Then I started to wonder about online reviews and our dependence on them.
In today’s on-demand society, before we take steps in hiring vendors or in buying products, the first thing we usually do is go straight to the online reviewers. What we’re searching for is testimonial from others, people who are just like us or facing the same type of dilemmas. We want to know the important questions: is it a good product? Is it worth the Return on Investment? Does it do what the salesperson claims it does, or is it just the same old marketing fluff?
From a consumer standpoint, this makes perfect sense. After all, the majority of want to avoid making bad decisions and getting the impressions of others who took the purchasing leap before us gives us a fast way to predict our own experiences. This results in a very convenient shortcut as we get to vicariously witness the potential benefits or negatives of a product, thereby avoiding any risks should it not work as advertised.
Like any decision-making heuristic that cuts corners, however, the adherence to testimonials has its flaws. For one, it is very easy for a product to receive high reviews, especially when that product is new. I often make decisions to purchase the latest high-tech gadget only one or two days after the initial release. Of course, I read the preliminary reviews which often tend to be 5-stars. After a few short days, however, the defects begin to appear, sometimes with a rush of complaints. As time goes on and more people contribute to the review, the 5-star values are seen as outliers and the mean rating scores adjust themselves with the input of new assessments. Put simply, the more people who review a product, the more accurate the true representation of that product. Although it is never a great idea to buy a new item on its release date, having such patience is easier said than done.
A second issue with basing our decisions primarily on testimonial is that we often fail to separate opinion from fact. Just because the majority of reviews are positive on a product does not mean that we will experience the same findings. Although this may seem logical in reading, we still fall for this trap each time we read about a critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated film and then, after viewing it, realize that it did not live up to the hype. This can lead to questioning our own assessments or, more likely, lack of faith in a vendor that might be fabricating reviews or even the people who write them!
But I am not suggesting that we delegitimatize testimonials or that we find other means for making our decisions. The first-hand review has been, and always should be, an important factor in helping us reach our conclusions. What I am saying is that, given the constant flow of data and information around us, we have started to rely much more heavily on the online rating systems and less on other, equally important weights. This does us a disservice when we consider that the death of many outstanding products occurred simply because the marketing campaign, and not the technology, was weaker than its rivals.
For most people, the dependence on reviews may be enough to make their decisions. It is clearly more time-saving than poring through pages of product specifications looking for the right features, but it does have limitations that could end up leading us down the wrong path.
As for me, the local pest control service I had six five-star (“excellent”) reviews and one one-star (“terrible”) rating. The comment for the one-star was the following:
“Worst work ever. Don’t believe what the others are writing. They did nothing to help my bug problem.”
At some point, I thought I could hear the six-legged thing in the bathtub rejoicing.