Story by Margie Peterson
Image by Shutterstock/TarikVision
Nevena Koukova and Rebecca Wang are sorting it out for you.
You just moved into a new city and need to find a doctor. You don’t know anybody yet so you turn to online reviews to see which physicians are highly rated.
What you may not know is that ratings can vary significantly depending on what platform the reviews are published. Yet, consumers tend not to pay attention to or understand that fact.
Those were among the findings of studies by Nevena Koukova and Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang, Lehigh Business associate professors of marketing, in collaboration with Katie Spangenberg and Mathew Isaac, faculty at Seattle University.
The research team examined online reviews in three areas: healthcare, beauty products and sports apparel. For healthcare, they looked at reviews for 124 doctors and other healthcare providers affiliated with the University of Utah. The study compared the reviews on the University of Utah Health website to those from the independent Healthgrades.com.
Researchers found that the reviews of the same doctors on the university’s own website were more positive, with more five- and four-star ratings, while those on Healthgrades were more negative and diverse.
For beauty products, they looked at reviews for 97 Clinique products, comparing those reviews on the Clinique website with reviews on Sephora.com. Overall, the reviews and ratings of the same products were higher on Clinique.com than on Sephora.
The final study was a comprehensive examination of 219,160 reviews from August 2007 to March 2024 for 2,482 products of the 12 top brands on REI.com, which sells outdoor gear and apparel. Of those reviews, 161,949 were syndicated from other websites, such as thenorthface.com and patagonia.com. REI partnered with Bazaarvoice to gather reviews from brands’ websites and display them on REI.com.
Reviews on a brand’s own website are termed “first-party reviews” and those on independent sites, such as Healthgrades.com, Sephora.com and REI.com, are considered “third-party reviews.”
“The first-party reviews were significantly higher,” Koukova says. “First-party reviews were not only higher in rating, they were shorter, less engaging, less helpful and more positive.”
The researchers found that people tend to ignore the differences in platforms when making purchases, which they call “platform neglect.”
“It’s very interesting that consumers don’t pay attention to this,” Koukova says. “They just read the review without pausing to consider where the review came from.”
“When consumers are made aware of different types of platforms, they account for the difference and grow to trust the third-party web sites more.”
The problem is significant because online reviews are extremely important to service providers and retailers since they have the potential to heavily influence consumer spending decisions, Koukova says. Surveys have shown online customers—of many different products and services—say they rely on reviews before making a purchase, especially from smaller and local companies.
In conducting the studies, the researchers first sought to document the problem of platform neglect. Now, they are turning to remedies that might encourage people to seek out more objective information, including inviting them to make their own cross-platform comparisons.
“Our main focus is how we can educate consumers so they are more aware of the differences between various platforms or websites where they find product reviews,” Koukova says. “This will help consumers when they make decisions about which medical providers to choose or products to buy.”
Why it Matters
Consumers can’t be reminded enough to consider the source for any guidance or advice they find online.