Merchants like Amazon.com and Wal-Mart are using customers' opinions to assess a product's performance, revealing that shoppers are increasingly turning to their peers, rather than advertising, for advice.
Mark Randall, vice president of Amazon.com's toy and baby division, says he thinks reviews factor heavily in consumers' decision-making process online.Randall cites the success of Blokus, a game by a French company that climbed to the top of Amazon's best-reviewed toys and games list and crossed over to the best-selling list.
"If you look at the industry toy list, it was never really a mainstream game," Randall says. "People have seen great ratings on the item, read a bunch of the reviews. I think that's really driven sales."
Source: CRM Buyer, http://crmbuyer.com