Amazon is banning the practice of companies offering free products to customers in exchange for a review.
An incentivised review is when a seller offers an online shopper a product for free, or at a discount, in exchange for a write-up.
Having product reviews that shoppers can trust has played a big part in Amazon’s success, but it has always prohibited payment for reviews. However, it had made an exception for reviewers that disclosed that fact.
In future, such reviews can only come via the online store’s own program, Amazon Vine, the company said.
“These so-called ‘incentivised reviews’ make up only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of reviews on Amazon, and when done carefully, they can be helpful to customers by providing a foundation of reviews for new or less well-known products,” Chee Chew, vice-president of customer experience at Amazon, wrote in a blog post.
Outlining the change in policy, the company wrote in its community guidelines:
“Content and activities consisting of advertising, promotion, or solicitation (whether direct or indirect) is not allowed, including … [c]reating, modifying, or posting content in exchange for compensation of any kind (including free or discounted products) or on behalf of anyone else.”
The only exceptions are for books, and the Amazon Vine program where the company offers select customers the chance to share their thoughts on new products on the site or items that are about to be released.
Research firm ReviewMeta recently examined around seven million product reviews posted on Amazon’s site and found, perhaps not surprisingly, that incentivized reviewers were more likely to give a higher rating than regular contributors.
“Consumers have growing distrust and even disdain for incentivised reviews, especially when it seems every single one is a glowing five-star review,” ReviewMeta said after analyzing its data.
While Amazon is already fighting against businesses that sell fake reviews to merchants, the company had until now allowed “honest and unbiased” incentivized reviews to appear on its site so long as no cash changed hands and the poster made clear the nature of the review.
Amazon’s Vine program invites trusted reviewers to post opinions about new and pre-released items to help shoppers make informed purchase decisions.
“Vine has important controls in place and has proven to be especially valuable for getting early reviews on new products that have not yet been able to generate enough sales to have significant numbers of organic reviews,” said Chew.
Reviewers are chosen by Amazon and tend to be people who have developed a reputation for expertise in specific products.