News

Study says 'neutral' online reviews are anything but neutral

Although businesses have recognized the value of online reviews for monitoring consumer interests, social media monitoring tools only track positive and negative sentiments, while overlooking the large amount of neutral reviews, which comprise about 50 percent of online reviews.

July 30, 2014

A recent study challenged most people's implicit perception that neutral reviews have no impact on sales, and unveiled that neutral reviews are not neutral as they appear. They can change people to perceive positive and negative reviews, thus influence sales.

Although businesses have recognized the value of online reviews for monitoring consumer interests, social media monitoring tools only track positive and negative sentiments, while overlooking the large amount of neutral reviews, which comprise about 50 percent of online reviews (see table below). The ignorance of neutral contents is due to the opinion that neutral reviews show no inclination to recommend or dis-recommend a product, and have no impact on sales.

Distributions of Positive, Negative, and Neutral Reviews on Facebook and YouTube

However, according to Tanya Tang, a marketing assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the coauthors, Eric Fang from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Feng Wang from Hunan University, "The existence of neutral reviews can put a significant influence in shaping consumers' motivation and ability of perceiving positive and negative reviews. The effects of positive and negative reviews on product sales are substantially underestimated (overestimated) by 66%–70% (85%–92%) if mixed (indifferent) neutral reviews are ignored."

The study differentiated two types of neutral reviews: mixed neutral that contains a balanced positive and negative evaluation of product attributes from indifferent neutral that includes neither positive nor negative evaluations. The analysis in the July 2014 issue of the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing found that mixed neutral contains conflicting attitudes about a product and are perceived as controversial and diagnostic, thus increase consumers' motivation and ability to process more positive and negative reviews to reduce such conflicts. Whereas, indifferent neutral may lead consumers to lose the desire to receive more positive and negative reviews, because substantial indifferent neutral conflicts with both positive and negative reviews, which discredit their claims.