Product Reviews on Amazon
How many times have you purchased a product off Amazon with no reviews? What about less than 10 reviews, when there were similar products to choose from with over 100 reviews? I’m willing to bet never, or never again.
Product reviews are taken seriously by sellers, buyers, and Amazon itself due to their importance in the decision making process. Especially on Amazon, consumers rarely scroll past the first page of search results or take a chance on buying a poorly rated product / product with few reviews. Most customers sift through reviews and compare with similar products before making a final decision.
This results in a rich-get-richer phenomenon where popular, highly rated products attract more buyers and therefore more good reviews, and unreviewed products fall further down the search results. Buying the most popular product saves cognitive load for customers, who trust reviews and ratings by others. This results in an information cascade and contributes to the mindset “everyone else is buying it, it must be the best”. So even if you were considering Product B, you may be swayed by the top choice Product A and the information that everyone is choosing Product A.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-importance-reviews-amazon-amazon-ranking-expert/