The Problem With Product Reviews

And the andbrand solution

Product reviews are supposed to be our guides to making better everyday purchasing decisions. They should save us money, energy, and most importantly, time.

The best purchase is not always the most expensive one. “You get what you pay for” is an over simplification. Designer and brand name products can cost substantially more while being inferior to competitors’ products.

The idea of consumers sharing their true and actual experiences of products sounds great on the surface. However, the way that knowledge is currently shared can be inefficient and even counterproductive.

Many products on popular sites have 1000s of reviews. Within these reviews are VALUABLE experiences of real customers sharing their perspectives and insight. However it’s nearly impossible to find big picture trends. It could take many hours to even read all these reviews, let alone decipher relationships between them.

To illustrate the point, imagine you are thinking about buying a particular watch. There are 1,000 reviews on this watch. Out of these 1,000 reviews, 76 people have complained that the metal strap cuts in to their wrist and is uncomfortable. Many other things are discussed as well such as opinions on the aesthetic design elements, how complex it is to set the time, metal allergies, and whether or not it sets the metal detector off at the airport. Assume it would take you 3 hours to read all of these 1,000 reviews.

In order to determine how many times each distinct topic was spoken about (including the topic we are interested in, the wrist chafing), one could potentially create a spreadsheet, read through the reviews, and keep a running tally. This could get complicated with subjective opinions, but with enough time and energy an approximate count of every “general idea” could be tallied.

The reality, however, is that very few people would go through this process because it is simply not worth the effort. Especially for each product one is researching. Many people will read through the “most helpful” or “most recent” reviews on top, maybe the top “negative” reviews as well, and hope all of the things mentioned truly reflect the product. Few will ever know that there is about a 7.6% chance that they will receive cuts on their wrists from this product (due to a defective manufacturing process that leaves a sharp edge on the band). This information exists and is available, however it is not accessible to the everyday consumer due to the way the information is being presented.

Another problem with traditional reviews is the star rating system. There are countless examples of products receiving either low or high ratings based on opinions that are simply not relevant to the product.

Some of the most common examples are shipping or payment issues. One customer believes the “stars” to be a reflection of the quality of a product, while another customer provides 1 out of 5 stars based on a 3rd party’s ability to deliver the product on time. A Sony tablet should not be perceived as low quality by other customers (due to accumulating lower stars) because an employee in the Amazon warehouse put the wrong product in a box and a customer provided a 1 star rating.

Another common problem is complaining about features. One person may give a television 2 stars because it does not have an HDMI port. This is the same individual that bought a TV that does not come with an HDMI port.

Star rating systems are subjective by nature. One customer may give a blender 2 stars due to it waking up his/her child in the morning, while another customer give’s it 5 stars for perfectly blending guacamole. It’s true that lots of reviews generally reduce this “noise,” however the fact stands that one is comparing apples to oranges in many cases. And others are perfectly fine with the noise.

There is also the fake review epidemic where companies pay people to either write postive reviews for their products or negative reviews for their competitors’ products.

The problem is structural. Ideas are shared in paragraph form, many things are spoken about in each review without any particular order, and it becomes at the very least difficult to find important and valuable relationships.

andbrand is an innovative, yet simple, mobile app that attempts to approach this problem in a new way. It allows people to share their opinions on ONE particular aspect of a product in tech, and then allows other people to confirm they have had a similar experience.

The valuable insight that would have taken hours to painstakingly produce using a spreadsheet is instantaneously available. It is intuitive, digestible, and efficient.

We believe the consensus of a community of consumers should create the digital representation of the quality of a product. andbrand is our attempt to make that vision real.