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Let’s distinguish between public and private reviews:
- Public: Addressed to potential customers and partly to the company, knowing they will read the review.
- Private: Addressed to the company only.
In this article, we’re focusing on public reviews, though many principles and obstacles apply to both.
Reasons for writing a review combine altruism, emotional needs, personal benefits, social connection, and self-enhancement .
Research shows that consumers’ decisions to leave a review often hinge on the quality of their experience . The motivation varies based on whether the intent is positive (“I’m overall satisfied”), negative (“I’m overall disappointed”), or neutral (“I have both positive and negative feedback”).
Here’s a list of reasons for leaving an organic review online, based on research and my own insights:
- Altruism
- (positive) To recommend places to others.
- (positive) To help the business gain visibility. Dellarocas, Gao, and Narayan (2010) found that for products within the same category (e.g., movies), consumers prefer to post reviews for less-known or very popular products, creating a U-shaped relationship between buyers’ propensity to review .
- (neutral) To provide details about the service/product not included in the description.
- (neutral) To help the business improve by highlighting strengths and weaknesses.
- (negative) To warn others and help them avoid bad experiences. Fu, Ju, and Hsu (2015) suggest altruism drives both positive and negative reviews .
- Emotional need - Lovett, Peres, and Shachar provided a comprehensive research on this part (2013) .
- (positive) To genuinely thank the business.
- (positive or negative) To vent thoughts after an emotionally charged experience (especially for content like movies).
- (negative) To take revenge, for one-self and out of a feeling of justice : the belief that bad sellers should get what they deserve can lead to the sharing of negative opinions).
- Personal Benefit
- (negative) To report issues and improve their own experience (e.g., continued use of a SaaS product).
- (negative) To seek a refund or compensation.
- Social connection
- (neutral) To contribute to the community of reviewers who help customers online. A study found that frequent reviewers are more likely to post when the review community shows a positive attitude or has disagreements about a product .
- Self-enhancement
- (neutral) To feel useful to others.
- (neutral) To boost their online reputation.
These main categories of reasons can overlap. For example, a user might leave a review to recommend a business (altruism), thank them (emotional need), and share their experience (emotional need)—something commonly seen on Airbnb. Self-enhancement is often intertwined with other reasons, such as feeling proud when warning others about issues. Social connection, as reviews form a kind of social network, is almost always a motivating factor.
Catalysts are factors that trigger these motivations:
- (positive or negative) The customer is surprised (positively or negatively): their opinion deviates from their initial expectations they had formed themselves or that were formed by the existing opinions . This constitues an emotional need to vent their thoughts or thank the business (emotional need) or mention things that they weren’t aware of before purchasing (altruism).
- (positive) The business asked the customer the favour of leaving a review. This reason is often mentioned in articles as one generating many online reviews, resulting in an inflation of positive reviews vs the average experience.
- (negative) The customer had repetitive issues despite having mentioned them to the business. They may feel that their voice will be heard more (personal benefit) and that the business should get what they deserve (revenge and justice).
- (positive) The business offers a discount or any additional benefit if the customer leaves a review (personal benefit).
- (neutral) The reviewer gets a special status when they leave more online reviews (gamification of platforms). This presses the self-enhancement trigger. Google does that with their “local guide” badge for example. On many platforms, the upvotes acquired when the review is marked as “helpful” are another example. A research suggests that if a platform implements a ranking system that quantifies reviewer reputation, reviewers become more sensitive to competition among existing reviews, are more likely to review niche products, and post more differentiated reviews to capture attention in order to improve their reputation .
- (neutral) The user can see the review they got only when they left one. That’s the famous “hack” used by Airbnb. This presses the self-enhancement trigger: people want to know what others thought of them as a guest or as a host. It works only on platforms where both parties review each other.
Finally, how do people leave a review?
- Organically on public platforms (Google, Amazon, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot…)
- Through business invitations via email, SMS, in-app post-purchase screens, or app notifications.
Given the reasons and catalysts above, organic reviews tend to highlight negative experiences, while invited reviews are often more positive. We’ll explore this further in the section “Organic reviews are bad, invited reviews are good” below.
These are the reasons for leaving a review. In the “What Needs to Be Fixed: At The Reviewer Level” chapter, we’ll discuss the limitations and obstacles that prevent people from leaving reviews.
“Electronic word-of-mouth via consumer-opinion platforms: What motivates consumers to articulate themselves on the Internet?”, Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004.
“Designing Better Online Review Systems”, Harvard Business Review, by Geoff Donaker, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca, 2019.
"Are Consumers More Likely to Contribute Online Reviews for Hit or Niche Products?”, Dellarocas, Gao, and Narayan, 2010.
“Understanding why consumers engage in electronic word-of-mouth communication: Perspectives from theory of planned behavior and justice theory”, Fu, Ju, and Hsu, 2015.
"On Brands and Word of Mouth”, Lovett, Peres, and Shachar, 2015.
“Online Product Opinions: Incidence, Evaluation, and Evolution”, Moe and Schweidel, 2012.
“Competing for Attention: An Empirical Study of Online Reviewers’ Strategic Behavior”, Shen, Hu and Ulmer, 2015.