Why Review Scores Are Ruining The Tech Industry
posted by Doomzilla in Hardware, Reviews, Web |Like being graded in school, having a rating is an easy way to compare two similar competitors. You could put two students side by side with their GPA, one with a 3.8 and one with a 3.2. When asked which one is a better student you might automatically jump to the conclusion that the student with the higher GPA is a better student, but you would be failing to ignore a myriad of other factors. Other things need to be taken into consideration before you make your decision like what course is each student strongest in, how socially adept they are, how involved the students are in extracurricular activities, if they do volunteer work, what jobs they hold, have they been featured in a publication, or had their actual work published… I think you get the point.
Now think about comparing to similar tech products by competing companies. Let’s pretend that both of those products are compared by the same publication within a week of each other. Company A gets a 9/10 for their product and Company B gets a 7/10. Now many people, when shopping for that particular product are going to have to choose between A or B. The consumer that doesn’t want to think about it, or doesn’t know a lot about that type of product may just look at the ratings and choose the product that got the higher score. Is this the right choice? Many would say “no”, but nonetheless it effects our purchases more than we would like to admit.
So, the consumer bought product A because it had a higher score, but when they get home they find out that this multifaceted item is great, but its a bit lacking in the main task that they will use it for. “Oh well”, they say as they still feel they have bought the right item. Then they realize that it doesn’t communicate well with the rest of their gadgets because of proprietary software or protocol. Again they say “Oh well”, except not quite as convinced this time. Wanting to do a little more research about the company who made the product they just bought they find out that the company is a very large corporation. Also, the company has poor reviews for their customer service and one device they made two years ago was faulty and caused instability in the company with an obnoxious amount of RMAs and repairs. Now the customer isn’t so sure of their product, but at least it had a higher score in the review by a company who is affiliated with them through a promotion.
Now, I understand this is a bit dramatic, but I’m just trying to prove a point. You can easily compare two items side by side and assume the one with the higher score is better, but in the end you may end up hurting yourself with a bad purchase. Reviewers should not feel that they have to score everything on a scale of 10, 100, or just a letter grade. They should just concentrate on giving the facts about the product and the company. It is human nature to sway a little towards a product if you think it is nice or like the company, but to have that effect on a system where people may make side-by-side comparisons based on a single score is wrong. Consumers should only see the pros and cons and make the decision for themselves based on their own personal wants and needs. Consumers should be inspired by reviews to get all the facts about a product that they are going to spend their hard earned money on.
I feel the biggest market effected by this is the laptop market. Even if two scores for two laptops were the same, those two laptops could be significantly different from each other and suit very different user needs. Anyways, the moral of the story is to shop smart and don’t be afraid to do some research of your own. Reviews are a great starting point, but your personal needs should definitely outweigh the fact that some guy on the internet thought the product was the next greatest thing since silicon wafers and gave it a perfect ten followed by a string of unnecessary exclamation points.
