Consumer behavior has changed in many ways since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online shopping has now become for many, including myself, a normal way to shop. One important factor for me in determining what to buy—whether it’s clothes, furniture, or food deliveries—is the online reviews.

That’s why I found this article by Minjung Roh and Sung-Byung Yang so interesting. They examined 951,178 reviews of New York restaurants on Yelp.com to determine which type of reviews would be most useful to the consumer. They found that extremely positive or negative reviews were considered more useful than moderate ones and that negative reviews were actually considered more useful than positive ones.

They determined that it is a good idea for businesses to build user interfaces that more clearly reveal the contrast between review ratings at the positive and negative extremes. Or, businesses could even provide consumers with sorting options such as sorting by helpful votes or by useful votes. All of this could help consumers, including me, in making the all-important decision of where to eat on a Friday night!

Leisha Gomez | Publishing Editor
Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal