Online negativity has hardened many brands to bad reviews. Serve enough customers, the thinking goes, and some are bound to trash you. But just how much damage can an online rant actually do?
Quite a lot, according to Moz. The marketing firm found that one negative article can lose a company as many as 22 percent of its customers. Just four such articles can drive off 70 percent of potential customers something any business would struggle to bounce back from.
Why are bad reviews so destructive? Despite the fact that theyre less trustworthy than most consumers think, consumers continue to base their purchase decisions on them. Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of American adults sometimes or always read online reviews before making new purchases, 65 percent of whom believe theyre generally accurate. Yet a Journal of Consumer Research study found almost no correlation between professional assessments (in this case, Consumer Reports ratings) and online reviews.
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