Amazon axes incentivized reviews
The online marketplace said reviewers can no longer be compensated for their feedback, unless it’s through the company’s promotional program.
On Monday, the company announced that it was giving the boot to incentivized reviews—those written in exchange for free or discounted products.
Chee Chew, Amazon’s vice president of customer experience, wrote in a company blog post:
Customer reviews are one of the most valuable tools we offer customers for making informed purchase decisions, and we work hard to make sure they are doing their job. In just the past year, we’ve improved review ratings by introducing a machine learned algorithm that gives more weight to newer, more helpful reviews; applying stricter criteria to qualify for the Amazon verified purchase badge; and suspending, banning or suing thousands of individuals for attempting to manipulate reviews.
Our community guidelines have always prohibited compensation for reviews, with an exception – reviewers could post a review in exchange for a free or discounted product as long as they disclosed that fact. These so-called ‘incentivized reviews’ make up only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of reviews on Amazon, and when done carefully, they can be helpful to customers by providing a foundation of reviews for new or less well-known products.
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