The smart sellers realize this as well. Often the most "useful" review is also fake. Let's just create a 2 or 3 star review and list out the pros and (fake) cons and get people to upvote it.
So here's some perspective from an Amazon seller doing 7 figures+ annually.
- On average, only 1-3% of customers review products.
- Each review is worth a lot of money, often times multiples of the product itself, and especially if you're just starting out.
- Each category in Amazon has it's own Average rating, for example, electronics typically have lower ratings because more things can go wrong and there are more usability issues vs something like kitchenware, where less things fail outright.
- If you play in a category with a certain failure rate, it is absolutely essential that you do everything you can to mitigate bad reviews as enough of them will sink your business, even if you have a great product.
- It takes 8+ 5 star reviews to counteract a 1 star review if you want to maintain a 4.5 star average which is the bar for a good product. This is extremely hard to do without manipulation.
- People who complain about fake reviews are only seeing half the problem, the other half is that legit businesses who do it the fair way can't compete. How do you launch a great product on Amazon with 0 reviews? Hope that 500 people buy it to maybe get 5 reviews? Alternatively you spend thousands on product ads hoping that enough people buy... or just succumb to the dark side and pay for reviews which is WAY cheaper.
- If you hate Amazon reviews, do your part and start reviewing the good products on Amazon. It is worth more to the seller than you think!
Source: I'm an Amazon seller.