Consumer reviews — The trust of the innocent
The unconnected problem series, Story 2 — Connecting with the genuine consumer experiences .
“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool”.
- Stephen King
I often tend to read the user reviews before I buy any new product online. However I am really not sure if the reviews which I read on the e-commerce websites are genuine.
If I can somehow anonymously connect with the actual buyer of the product and get a real-time feedback about the overall experience along with some evidence like product photos or videos, it could be a lot easier to make that final buying decision.
This everyday problem looks relatively simple, however sustaining such a trusted channel is hard to realize.
We trust more when we talk to people who are actually using the product or experienced a specific service. We often consult our friends or family before buying a specific product or their experience with services which we are interested.
On the other hand reviews on popular e-commerce website are less trust worthy and leaves me confused with the final buying decision. A recent survey found that 80% e-commerce consumers find product reviews inaccurate and more than one in two ( 58%) consumers complain that their negative product ratings and reviews are not being published by ecommerce platforms.
Some facts about online reviews / ratings —
- Only 23% consumers feel that their negative reviews or ratings on e-commerce sites were published as it is.
- Nearly 65 % consumers found the product ratings on e-commerce sites to be positively biased, indicating that sellers may be influencing ratings for their products to attract consumers and platforms are not proactively acting in such situations
- About 90% of those surveyed said the e-commerce platforms should restrict low-rated products from sellers to be re-listed as another product
Centralized online product or service reviews are governed by a few e-commerce companies or specific owners who act like gatekeepers governing majority of the online reviews of products and services. Hence these reviews are less trustable over time.
Alternate review sites tend to only shift the ownership to another centralized review or feedback system, hence the original problem of trust in a central system is still not solved. At the same time each buyer or a product or service goes through individual digital experience of buying in isolation without being able to actively share this experience ( hence connecting ) in a meaningful way to the wider community.
Decentralization which dissolves the need for a central authority could be one possible solution to sustain a trustable network of consumer experiences. However decentralization brings in its own problems. Implementing such a decentralized solution brings added costs. And a big decision to sustain is who will pay for that added costs of decentralized technology like blockchains ?
Could government or non-profit consumer organizations intervene and bear the underlying infrastructure costs to sustain the operations of a network of consumers safeguarding the neutral reviews hence maintain the trust factor ?
Another concern is privacy of the participants which will need to be protected. Such platforms could easily be target for hackers or identity theft, hence adequate level of security needs to be guaranteed. Also there should be motivation or incentive for buyers to actively participate and sustain the network.
To implement blockchain, each transaction’s data must be exchanged and validated. Often, that exchange occurs instantly by using sensors. The sensors can range from RFID chips the size of a grain of sand inserted into expensive wine bottles, to chips placed on product labels or attached to cases of goods. In every situation, some sort of technology will need to be installed so that when a transaction occurs, that data can be read, transmitted, logged and verified by the blockchain. And each transaction along the chain — from the manufacturer to the consumer — will need to be recorded. So, who will pay for this?
When new technologies enter the marketplace, governments often step in to aid in user adoption. In 2018, the UK’s Government Food Standard Agency (FSA), successfully completed a food chain blockchain trial for beef in a cattle slaughterhouse. While the trial was limited and initial data collected small, government programs like this are a strong start in spreading the costs across all participants in a food chain, as well as potentially subsidizing implementation costs.
The next challenge facing companies using blockchain technology is to determine if their chain should be public or private. Since the blockchain is a distributed ledger where each node is validated by its members, all information can be seen by those members. Therefore, if a chain is public, all information can be seen, and so can all the transactions. For larger corporations, the information shared — trading partners, goods, location or even frequency — could expose strategic advantages they do not want to share with the world or their competitors.
On the flip side, consumers increasingly want to know more about the products they purchase. In a new report from the Food Marketing Institute, 75% of shoppers are more likely to switch to a brand with more information on a label. This means companies need to decide the balance between what blockchain information they decide to share with the public versus which business transactions to keep private.
But what if a company wants both — public transparency while maintaining data privacy? Enter Hybrid Blockchain. A hybrid blockchain consists of using both a public blockchain and a private network that restricts participation to only those invited. Leveraging this technology, companies have the flexibility to determine what data is shared and with whom. Governments and multinational organizations are gravitating towards hybrid blockchains to gain the benefits of distributed ledger technology without the associated risks.
In summary, the problem still remains as an unconnected dot in the networked society. Hopefully in future a sustainable mechanism will allow potential buyers directly connect with a genuine buyer of a certain product or service to discover individual experiences. Such a secure network of consumers could largely improve the trust hence the overall digital buying experience.
