UWP

001

Zifeng Li

Discourse Community Project

A research of extreme online customer reviews from the view of discourse community

and their possible impact on the online consumption environment

Introduction

A marketing system based on customer review is now being used by most of the online

shopping websites. It is originally designed to be an ideal way to enforce the producer to

maintain producing high quality products and providing high quality services by a real time

rating system written by the users, who dont have a direct interest relationship with the

company. (Ioans and Stoica, 2014) These feedbacks normally have a great impact on

consumers behavior. Because unlike a physical store, shopping online often provides

customers with vast choices within several webpages and all of these products are virtual. So

the opportunity for consumers to look for the detailed information of the products is relatively

low. In this situation, customers tend to seek for another valid and efficient criterion. Research

has showed that the major influence of the feedback of other buyers takes place particularly

when the consumers have been exposed to all variety of information about the products and

yet havent made a final decision. (Kowalska, 2012) It is designed so that people can rely on

the using experiences of other customers instead of the advertisements made by the

companies to gather important information of the products.

The designed goal of customers leaving the feedbacks is to provide useful information based

on their using experiences to other potential buyers to help them make their purchasing

decision. Then the customers who leave the feedbacks become a discourse community

because this is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through

approved channels and whose discourse is regulated. (Porter, 2011). The common goal is

critically important because it defines the meaning of whole community. But the truth is, there

is a serious divergence between these reviews designed goal, which is providing objective

information, and the goal that customers who write them actually interpret, which is just an

approach to express their subjective feelings after using the products. Whats more, the

tunnel this community is using, the genre of reviews, has some certain features that is
 making this divergence hard to identify. As a result, the different interpretations of this

communitys goal between its actual members and its outsiders and their using genre are

making the content of these reviews easily to be extreme and this phenomenon is having a

negative impact on the online consumption environment.

Polarized Rating System

A rating system based on the number of stars is a

commonly used method to describe the overall buyers

opinions to a certain product. It is normally presented by a

graph showing the distribution of the ranking. After randomly

selecting 20 popular products from Amazon, I found there

exists a pattern of the distribution. That is five-star and one-

star rating almost taking up 70% of the ranking distribution.

From Amazon.com

The example presented left is a typical rank distribution of a

relatively popular products.

Although these 20 selected products all has a 4-5 stars rating, one-star rating is normally

at 20 30%. There is clearly a conflict of opinion between two majorities. This is an evidence

of the reviews being extreme because the middle section of the ranking, which logically

indicates more neutral comments, isnt taking much percentage and the distribution.

Customers tend to be extreme when they find their products have some features they really

like or have some defects. Just like how my interviewee has described: Most of my rating goes

into 5-stars or just one-star. Because that is what I actually feel when I buy something I really

like or something that just goes wrong when I use it. I think it is harder for the consumer to be

really subjective when they are actually the favorers or the sufferers of the products. The real

reason behind this polarization is that consumers are just the user of the products. Their

feedbacks are not merely based on their using experience, but on their feelings and emotion

after they used the product. Their feedbacks are determined greatly by emotion which is

subjective enough for them not to be indifferent.

Actual reviews written by customers.

Under the polarized rating system, the actual reviews also present the same type of

polarization and this genre also has some other interesting features that are worth to analyze.

1. Short but powerful

From Amazon.com

They are typical examples of a 5-star review and a one-star review and they actually come

from the same product. These reviews often mention the words like the best, the

greatest, fantastic, love it or the negation of these words. These words clearly deliver

a strong opinion towards a product. But they are mostly subjective that actually reveal

very little thing about the products itself. When I asked my interviewee the question: when

you write a negative review of a products, is more about presenting its defects or showing

your dissatisfaction? His answer is the later one. Combining the example above. It is easy

to see that consumers, again, are more tend to use reviews to express their feelings and an

emotion status after they used the products. Then these reviews may not necessarily

reveal the true nature of a product.

2. Conflicts of statements

From Amazon.com

These two comments also come from the same laptop products. But their statements

towards the same aspects of the laptop the speed and the touch-screen, are extremely
 different from each other. By viewing other 10 products review, I found such contrast exits

in all these products in a similar way. This phenomenon also shows that there exists a

contradiction among the consumers even though they purchased the same item and talked

about the same aspect of the product. Besides, these words are usually strong and also

lack of specific example and explanation. This is also an example of reviews being extreme

and this phenomenon may also make other buyers confused about the truth of the

products.

3. Lack of actually example.

This phenomenon actually can be shown by the previous two examples represents.

Besides, by analyzing the latest 50 reviews of 5 popular items. 70% of these reviews are

merely 3 lines of comments and doesnt provide any strong evidence like photos or

detailed description about their products advantages or defects. A lack of actual example

or description is the main reason why these reviews tend to be extreme because when

people writing the review just based on their own feelings and emotions, their reviews

always represent their subjective side, not their objective side.

The effects of these review on the other buyers

Usually people would think that instead of being fooled by producers advertisement,

considering some pieces of advice and ideas of the consumers community which doesnt have

a direct interest relationship with the company is more rational. But actually, this system has

been already compromised because the reviews from individuals can be easily manipulated

by their own emotion. This feature of the genre using by the consumers is adding the

subjective aspects to this system, which may cause this system to be untrustworthy. Actually,

this problem is widespread. According to a research of fake reviews on Yelp-- one of the most

popular review website in US, nearly one out of five reviews is marked as fake, and these

reviews tend to be more extreme than other reviews, and are written by reviewers with less

established reputations. (Luca and Zervas, 2016) The online marketing system we are using

now clearly is not working as the ideal quality control mechanism we have imagined. The truth

is that the online shopping system has forced to rely on this review based system and pay less

and less attention on reviewing a product by themselves, but this system has already failed

providing a real and unbiased judgement of products to consumers. Therefore, any decision
weve made based on these reviews might not be very rational as weve imagined.

Companies strategies by using these extreme reviews

This negative impact not only comes from other buyers, but also comes from the

companies. Companies and firms now tend to use the loophole that the genre of review has on

some review platforms to complement information about their products and any feedbacks

of consumers describing their products. (Ioans and Stoica, 2014) Because consumers are

more likely to be influenced by feedback from the people they have already known or believed

like friends and celebrities when they have been exposed to all variety of information about

the products and yet havent made a final decision (Ioans and Stoica, 2014), companies may

use this opportunity to add more positive comments on these feedbacks to influence our

decision making process even though that may not be the real situation. Besides, the previous

research also indicates that organizations are more likely to use this loophole of the system

when they are facing increased competition and when they have poor or less established

reputations. (Luca and Zervas, 2016) Therefore, a five star rated product may dont actually

have that much customer satisfaction as its said. On the contrary, the real high quality items

may dont get the revenue they actually deserved because of this unfairly use of the system.

This is a vicious circle that can potentially lower the general quality of the online market and

then it will be the consumers that will take the negative consequences of buying the products

with lower and lower quality.

Final Words
This research presents the evidence of the how the customer reviews have a tendency of

being extreme, positively or negatively and also presents the possible negative impacts it

might cause. Because this community is formed without a validation of its members certain

expertise and reputation, the reviews written by these members, the consumers, tend to be

subjective, so they might not necessarily represent the real condition of the products. From

the view of discourse community, this phenomenon is caused by the different interpretations

of one communitys goal between its members and its outsiders and the immaturity of their
using genre.

Given the fact that the online customer reviews are taking a more and more important

role in the potential customers decision making process, we should pay more attention to

maintain the uniformity of this communitys purpose both inside and outside its circle and

look for certain improvement for the genre of reviews. For example, establishing a credit

system that only allow the customers who have certain expertise or reputation in a certain

field to post their reviews might greatly reduce the extreme reviews. Besides, having more

strict rules for reviews themselves like must giving pictures and detailed description can also

improve the quality of them.

This article can also be used by other research studying the relationship between the

inner and outer circle of one discourse community and how some features of this group such

as common goals or using genre can affect this relationship. The finding of this research can

be used for the research searching for certain improvements or solution to the online

customer review system or the research searching for the further impact this community and

its using genre may have on the current consumption environment.

Works cited

1.

Ioans, E., & Stoica, I. (2014). Social media and its impact on consumers behavior. International

Journal of Economic Practices and Theories, 4(2), 295-303.

URL:http://ijept.org/index.php/ijept%20/article/view/Social_Media_and_its_Impact_on_Co

nsumers_Behavior/134

2.

Kowalska, M. (2012). The Internet Impact on Market Behavior of Young Consumers. Journal of

International Studies, 5(1), 101-106.

URL:http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.ekon-element-

000171303869/c/171303869.pdf

3.

Luca, M., & Zervas, G. (2016). Fake it till you make it: Reputation, competition, and Yelp review

fraud. Management Science, 62(12), 3412-3427.

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/22836596/luca,zervas_fake-it-till-you-make-

it.pdf?sequence=1

4.

Porter, J. E. (2011). Intertextuality and the discourse community. Rhetoric Review, 5(1), 34-47.

URL:http://enl101-

102resourcesforteaching2015.umassd.wikispaces.net/file/view/Porter_Intertextuality_RR_1

986.pdf/546988918/Porter_Intertextuality_RR_1986.pdf

5.

Pictures cut out form Amazon.com.