Impact of reviews on customer buying habits
We live in an era that is often referred to as Age of Customer. What it means is that consumers are changing their buying habits with the positive and negative reviews they find for a product or service. We can relate to this quite easily now. We do not buy a home appliance, or a toy, or make a hotel booking without checking reviews by scrolling to the customer feedback or review section of many websites.
Customers have more power due to the easy access of user generated content found just a click away on the internet. Reviews play a crucial role in purchasing behavior and decisions.
There are many ways that reviews have influenced the customer buying behavior, which are discussed below:
1. Impact on sales
A very clear reaction to positive reviews would be a rise in sales, while negative reviews ruin your sales too. Reviews have a considerable effect on both claimed and actual purchasing behavior. No one want to buy a product that has bad reviews and obviously, people would be attracted to positive reviews more.
2. Influenced decision
- Online reviews have outrun other forms of marketing activities like television advertisement and social media, so retailers should emphasize it more. People of all demographic age groups tend to be influenced more by the online reviews and make an informed decision thereafter.
3. Trustworthy
When it comes to a comparison between online reviews and advertisements, consumers rely more on the former as consumers are usually the reviewers. When a consumer can relate to other consumer’s point of view, it makes more sense and trusting the other person’s opinion is much better.
4. Enhances customer experience while buying
Consumers don’t go to stores and buy according to the advertisements, rather they base their buying habit more on the reviews. Men and women in this context are no different, and their customer experience is greatly improved when they buy after checking reviews.
5. Determine where to buy
More and more brick and mortar stores are running out of business due to the easy availability of all the products online. Consumers can simply compare the prices and reviews online before purchasing a product from a particular place. In fact people prefer shopping online over going to a store for shopping.
Keeping the above mentioned points in mind, companies should understand the significance of online reviews on customer’s mindset. Companies should work on obtaining positive reviews from its customers and do appropriate evaluation for the negative reviews and act accordingly.
