{ Kid’s Pimp Suit Costume }

The fun started over a year ago, when Amazon.com began selling gallon jugs of milk. An anonymous consumer submitted a review, dubbing it “The Best Milk Ever!” and the tongue-in-cheek comment struck a chord. Since then nearly 900 consumers have written reviews of the $3.99 jug. Comments range from “Worth its weight in gold times infinity” to “My cat is awesome now.” One person recalled sending the milk to business contacts over the holidays: “Our clients were super-impressed, and I may be on my way to VP,” she raved.

Amazon’s now infamous milk-review page parodies a familiar phenomenon: the overwhelming positivity of customer reviews. If a Martian had access to the Internet, he’d conclude that Earth is a consumer paradise where every gadget merits five out of five stars and everyone on eBay is a “superfast A+++ highly recommended seller.” In fact, a recent study analyzing more than 585,000 customer-written reviews on Amazon found that the average book title gets 4.2 out of five stars. The same goes for customer write-ups on web sites of companies like Sears, Home Depot and Macy’s. Whether they’re reviewing cameras or cashmere, more than 80% of consumers award at least four stars. No wonder online retailers are rushing to add customer-comment sections to their sites. For years they spent billions persuading us that all their merchandise was above average; now they can relax and let us convince each other.

You’ve got to wonder why the ratings skew so high. One possible explanation is that they reflect the truth: Most products on the market today are flat-out wonderful. Ha-ha! The real answer lies in Amazon.com’s stapler section, where, believe it or not, a total of 42 customers have commented on stapler purchases. Not surprisingly, 27 granted five stars. A typical write-up: “It works very well and staples many papers together.” Five customers really hated their stapler and gave it just one star. But here’s the interesting part: Only one reviewer awarded three stars. Does that mean there’s no such thing as an average stapler? Hardly. It means that consumers review only products they love or loathe. As Paul A. Pavlou, professor of information systems with the Anderson Graduate School of Management, notes, consumer-generated ratings generally follow a particular distribution: lots of high ratings, some low ratings and few in between.

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Customer Reviews

Great lesson for the kids!, September 9, 2005
By loosenut (Seattle, WA)

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”. But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.

The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I’ve heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I’ll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

{ Playmobil Security Check Point | amazon.com }

related { Vincent van Mobilgogh }