Working with Focus Pointe Global, we embarked on a project to understand reviewers and non-reviewers better. We created a survey that garnered more than 1,600 respondents. We asked attitudinal questions about preferences and whether they perceived themselves as a reviewer or not, and added in the OCEAN/Big 5 personality traits questions for a deeper dive.
For product marketers, reviews are critical. Reviews are trending as the starting point for consumer shopping. Bloomberg recently noted that consumers now begin the buying process in Amazon rather than Google, because the search has more context with reviews. And Adweek reported 84% of consumers don’t trust advertising. Reviews are “the most important source when purchasing,” and are growing in power.
The results of our work were surprising. On only a single attribute of the Big 5 - Openness - correlated with both reviewers and non-reviewers. For the other 4 traits, reviewers and non-reviewers correlated very differently. The traits of Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness all correlated strongly with reviewers. Only Neuroticism correlated highly with non-reviewers.
In the context of personality traits that lead the way for reviewers, it's clear that the EAST model for behavior change (Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely) holds the keys to getting more reviews - from people who are already likely to write reviews. To get more reviews, make the process easy, timely and well-regulated.
This infographic summarizes our findings.
