How to improve Yelp review score
http://searchengineland.com/3-next-level-yelp-tricks-business-owners-263343
This article mentions three different strategies on how a Yelp business owner can improve his or her review score. The first strategy that this article mentions is calculating how many reviews it would take to reach a certain review score. For instance, it calculates how many five-star reviews and four-star reviews are needed if the business owner wants to achieve a rating of four star. The second strategy that this article mentions is how to remove any negative reviews. Negative reviews harm the review score, so removing them will improve the score. Also, removing them allows the business owners to convince the customers that the restaurant has great service and has great food. The third strategy is how to find the profile of a reviewer and notify that reviewer know that his or her review is being hidden from other users. This strategy is more cunning, as it requires digging through the code on the website.
This article is related to network effects that was covered in class. In order to sustain the business, the business owner must ensure a certain number of customers above the tipping point to keep coming to his or her restaurant. If not, the number of customers to come to that restaurant will eventually reach zero. In order to keep the number of customers above the tipping point, the business owner must ensure that the review score must be above a certain score, to convince that the restaurant is worthy to come and eat.
This article is also related to information cascade. For instance, if the review score is low, this information will be diffused to other potential customers. If these customers see a lot of bad reviews, then they might not want to go to that restaurant. If the threshold is low, then just a several couple of negative reviews might cause a cascade of people not going to that restaurant. This would cause huge revenue loss for the business owner. On the other hand, if there are a lot of high reviews, then the potential customers may want to go to that restaurant. If the threshold is low, then there may even be a cascade of people going to that restaurant.