Amazon.com, Inc (AMZN) Upgrades Its US Customer Reviews System
Amazon rolls out a new platform to generate useful and newer reviews for its customers in United States. The system will improve over time to provide better reviews
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is launching an upgraded customer reviews system in the US, as it plans to roll out a new machine-learning platform developed in-house to generate more useful and newer reviews, as reported by CNET .
The upgrade, which came into effect on Friday, will likely be unseen initially, as Amazon’s new platform steadily begins changing the top reviews and star rating on its product pages, the report said. The upgraded system will provide more weight to newer reviews, which will be taken from verified Amazon users voted as helpful by the customers.
“The system will learn what reviews are most helpful to customers…and it improves over time,” Amazon spokeswoman Julie Law said in an interview. “It’s all meant to make customer reviews more useful.”, she added.
The method of a product’s 5-star rating has been changed from a pure average of all reviews to a weighted average, but same criteria are used for the rating evaluation. The new (upgraded) customer reviews system is for the US customers only. However, the company hasn’t revealed if it plans to roll out the new platform in the overseas markets, according to CNET.
Customer reviews have been an essential part of Amazon’s platform for more than 20 years. Meanwhile, the 5-star rating system and written reviews have become a key accountability feature, and symbol of quality and popularity for products that customers cannot test or touch before acquiring.
Meanwhile, the system has proven to be beneficial in selling goods online and Amazon cigilantly considers all upgrades to its ratings system to enhance customer’s trust. Furthermore, in April, the company reported that it took legal action against four websites for allegedly generating fake reviews, according to CNET. The action was taken to keep away a small but possibly threatening amount of fake reviews.
Ms. Law said that the company looked at the new platform “very closely” before establishing it; however, she refused to comment on the time spent working on the platform.
“It’s just meant to make things that much more useful,” CNET quotes Ms. Law, “so people see things and know it reflects the current product experience.”, she added.
For instance, sometimes organizations make small changes to a product or attend to some buyer complaints, but this product isn’t officially renamed or updated, according to Ms. Law. She said the small upgrades in the new system will be noticed more when buyers continue to buy products from Amazon.
Amazon stock plummeted 1.02% on Friday. However, it traded up 0.03% at $435.06 in after-market trading. The stock has soared 40.14% year-to-date (YTD).
I am David, economist, originally from Britain, and studied in Germany and Canada. I am now living in the United States. I have a house in Ontario, but I actually never go. I wrote some books about sovereign debt, and mortgage loans. I am currently retired and dedicate most of my time to fishing. There were many topics in personal finances that have currently changed and other that I have never published before. So now in Business Finance, I found the opportunity to do so. Please let me know in the comments section which are your thoughts. Thank you and have a happy reading.
