Reviews of books and other products by Amazon

Well, Amazon have a stable of reviewers. They call these, apparently, ‘customer reviewers’. They seem to be employed by the firm rather than at the beck and call of the customer. No doubt about that. Apparently they give free comments and suggestions and feedback to the website. The aim of this, no doubt, is to improve marketability of the ‘products’. That, on the face of it, sounds predictable and fair enough. After all, their task is to give people using the Amazon site the opportunity to read their critiques. Subsequently, Amazon ensure that the readers can give feedback on how helpful, or not, their critical comments have been.

Apparently, there are two types of reviewers: classic and new. If you’re a classic reviewer it appears that you’ll have been providing these reviews for Amazon for at least 3 years and possibly for much more than a decade.

It seems that the new reviewers aren’t just tending to cover books. They’ve been able to extend their range across the huge and growing diversity of other products supplied by Amazon.

Apparently, there is a problem of plagiarism amongst reviewers. Interestingly, some reviews bear striking resemblance to each other. Attempts are made by reviewers whose work is ‘borrowed’ in this way to ensure that Amazon pick up the issue and tackle it. Thereby, presumably, the credibility of the review system isn’t dented too significantly.

To date, Amazon appears to have sustained the unitary system of ranking products such as books along a single dimension with criteria to support judgements at each level.