Review site

As online reviews is referred to texts that give Internet users assessments regarding products, services and organizations.

The opportunity to exchange opinions and reviews, has been around since the early days of the Internet. A more recent phenomenon are websites that are entirely designed to include customer reviews. One speaks of review sites or consumer portals.

Since customer reviews in the search engine results lists often appear on the front seats, also the marketing departments of companies have to deal with them. Again and again lawyers are turned off for this to take action against unpopular Reviews. The comments are subdivided into statements of fact and value judgments. Value judgments are in principle protected by the freedom of expression, where the line is drawn there where rights of third parties are deliberately violated.

Review opportunities on the Internet

In the way of online assessment delivery there is continued innovations; the number of pages that require the user to submit reviews, is increasing.

Review sites

Among the first review sites that have attracted attention in the German Internet, belongs Ciao.de, a website founded in 1999 Ciao GmbH.

Later portals were created in which reviews the work of teachers (see Spickmich ), professors (see My Prof ) or can be submitted to employers. There are also portals that are aimed to include reviews of medical practices and law firms. A recent subgroup is formed by referral and feedback portals. Recommendation portals publish only positive reviews. Feedback portals conduct additional negative feedbacks without public exposure, as a suggestion for process optimization, to the students concerned (see Testmybiz ).

New possibilities emerge when mapping services and review sites are merged. For example, you can display Qype or questionable titus excerpts from Maps and can to all institutions that play a role in the relevant urban area, write reviews. The page Geoflags goes a step further and consists for the most part only of a card full of facilities, rather than to present them in the usual form of lists.

The idea of ​​evaluation by employers via the Internet originated in the United States: is a pioneer here the website jobvent.com. In the German-speaking world originated with Jobvoting.de only in the year 2006, the first website for job evaluations. Meanwhile, however, are still more pages added, such as kununu.com, which since 2013 is part of the business of the career network Xing. In particular, in 2008 the media interest was very high for this new form of reviews and found expression in reports in national newspapers, magazines and the news channel N24.

Reviews in electronic marketplaces

At amazon.com, users can submit reviews of books, DVDs and other products. In the online auction site eBay, it is for the sales success of a provider of great importance that the buyer leave positive feedback.

Reviews as a marketing tool on the Internet

Why constantly attract customers reviews in importance, the Deloitte study has explored:

According to the study, 80 % of the buying decisions of customer reviews are dependent and over 70% of respondents said, to pass hints to company reviews appearing online to family members and friends.

Customer Reviews as a competitive advantage from provider perspective

In the U.S. there are marketing departments that deal intensively with customer reviews. It is often stated that it is not primarily about going to get the best reviews, but that one is aimed to learn from negative criticism and stand ready to take appropriate actions.

A study at Entrepreneur.com lists three points that must be considered when in the long run good customer reviews and want to set it into a competitive advantage is to be built. It is recommended

• To make the company into a lifestyle and not just offer services,
• To respond to each customer on written feedback,
• Not to put the company's reputation by fake customer reviews on the line.

Gender aspects

Studies have shown that women use customer reviews to make a decision, while men use customer reviews in order to form an opinion about a product.

When a purchase decision is important for men that they can use the product immediately and that it meets the current purchase requirements. In women, however, the long-term benefits of buying is crucial.