HKUST Business Review

THE HIDDEN COST OF ASKING FOR REVIEWS To explore this question, my colleagues and I analyzed more than 700,000 reviews from more than 500 hotels on TripAdvisor and Expedia. We compared TripAdvisor and Expedia ratings for the same hotels before and after they started using the TripAdvisor Review Express tool, which helps hotels send emails inviting guests to post a review after their stay (at the time, Expedia did not offer an equivalent tool, which enabled us to isolate the impact of using a solicitation tool on a brand’s ratings and reviews). ccording to recent surveys, 65% of consumers trust online reviews more than ads, and nearly four out of five trust reviews from strangers online just as much as personal recommendations from their friends and family. Online reviews have become incredibly valuable to brands, and so, it’s no surprise that many sellers have begun taking steps to proactively solicit reviews from their customers. In some cases, companies have attempted to pay or otherwise incentivize customers to leave reviews — but of course, this comes with obvious risks, from egregiously violating many ecommerce platforms’ terms of service to substantially reducing consumers’ trust in a brand. That’s where platform-endorsed review solicitation tools come in. From Amazon’s Vine to TripAdvisor’s Review Express, many ecommerce platforms now offer tools specifically designed to help the businesses on their platforms collect reviews ethically and transparently. For many brands, using tools like these to solicit guest reviews seems like a no- brainer: They’re typically free or low-cost, and they’re an easy way to boost your review volume and potentially lift your ratings. But what actually happens when brands use these programs? WANG Jing Authored by An analysis of more than 700,000 TripAdvisor and Expedia reviews finds that soliciting reviews decreases organic review rates, and it worsens the quality of the reviews people do write. 30 HKUST Business Review Insight ONLINE BUSINESS Figure 1. TripAdvisor labels solicited reviews with a clear disclosure.