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Brandjacking by fake review

By Quentin Langley

Two related stories here.

First, the New York Attorney General is to clamp down on search engine optimisation companies which pay people to write fake reviews of products.

Second, academic research at MIT and Northwestern suggests that significant numbers of people are writing fake reviews of products for their own reasons. These reviews are overwhelmingly hostile. This does not appear to relate to previous stories on Brandjack News, including people writing satirical reviews – such as for the Bic For Her pens. These people appear to be freelance brand advocates.

This seems very odd. Why would a person who is an enthusiast for a brand – as many of the negative reviewers seem to be, judging by both prior and subsequent purchase history – be likely to submit highly negative reviewers? These reviewers are significantly more negative about products they have not purchased than they are about the products they have purchased. It seems to be that people are living the cliché that your best friend is your harshest critic. People are reviewing products in order to improve them because they love the brand.

One line I would like to see investigated is this: are people loyal to one version of the brand and thus negatively reviewing another version? Might a Coke lover submit an excessively harsh review of New Coke not through disliking the product but as a way of asserting love for the traditional line? Might an admirer of Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of James Bond feign an excessive loathing of Daniel Craig in order to boost Brosnan's status. Certainly, in tribal fields such as sports and politics loving one brand is best demonstrated by loathing of another.

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4 responses to “Brandjacking by fake review”

  1. Gordon Landwirth Avatar
    Gordon Landwirth

    Apparently the data are most suggestive of a dynamic in which brand-loyal consumers are reacting negatively to extensions of the brand to which they object.
    After noting that “[T]he most loyal customers are the most negative reviewers,” the authors write,
    “when would a self-appointed brand manager be most likely to write a review? One possibility is that customers are more likely to react when they see a product that they did not expect. If a customer, who has only purchased women’s apparel from the firm, is browsing the firm’s website and notices that the firm now sells pet products(for example),this may prompt the self-appointed brand managers to provide feedback by clicking the button inviting a review.”
    They also note that “In a related example, Harley Davidson’s introduction of a line of perfume (“Destiny by Harley Davidson”) reportedly prompted substantial negative feedback from its traditional customers.”
    Applying the data to this hypothesis, they find:
    “Reviews without a prior transaction are more likely to be written for items that were introduced recently. They also tend to be niche items with relatively small sales volumes. These findings are all consistent with the prediction that customers are more likely to provide feedback on items they had not purchased when they see the firm selling a product that they did not expect to see.”

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  2. Gordon Landwirth Avatar
    Gordon Landwirth

    Link to the study: http://web.mit.edu/simester/Public/Papers/Deceptive_Reviews.pdf

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  3. Quentin Langley Avatar
    Quentin Langley

    Thanks, Gordon, I spotted that. It doesn’t go to my point, though, about more minor brand extensions or developments – such as Craig replacing Brosnan in James Bond.

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  4. Gordon Landwirth Avatar
    Gordon Landwirth

    Quentin,
    I would think (just intuitively) that the aforementioned consumer dynamic would occur more with greater stretches of the brand than with minor brand extensions, and the authors indicate the former. They offer the illustration of an apparel brand launching pet products, not an apparel brand extending into some new category of apparel or even into fashion accessories.
    As for Craig replacing Brosnan, I would categorize that as a major product redesign (replacing a major component that can very substantially affect the consumer’s experience). Apparently the authors didn’t find those situations as best fitting their data, but rather a new type of product the brand-loyal consumer didn’t expect to see, and which he/she apparently considers inappropriate or unwise or otherwise objectionable.
    That said, your point/question is an important one. It may be that their data points did not include sufficient instances of such major product redesigns for those instances to show up in the data as a major driver of such reviews, yet such instances could be highly correlated with such reviews. As your question implies, it’s quite possible that a highly-involved, brand-loyal consumer would be more likely than any other consumer to react with such a review (very negative, without having tried the product).

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