Reviews:Fake

Fake reviews are reviews that are inconsistent with real evaluations of products or services. Such reviews might be posted by different types of people, including consumers, online merchants, and review platforms. The deciding feature of fake reviews is whether they mislead consumers. From the valence of the reviews, fake reviews can be positive, negative, or neutral. The proportion of fake reviews is estimated to range from 16% to 33%. Moreover, about 10% of online products were subjected to review manipulation. Such reviews can have a significant effect on product perception. Fake reviews decrease informativeness, information quality, and the effective use of online product reviews.

Fake reviews also damage the credibility of reviews, and negatively affect review helpfulness. In addition, fake reviews seriously affect the development of online product reviews and stakeholders’ commitment to the reduction of information asymmetry between merchants and customers. Online sellers tend to publish positive fake reviews for their products or negative fake reviews against competitors’ products for financial gains. Platforms are inclined to acquiesce to review manipulations and add fake reviews to increase traffic and consumer engagement. Opportunity seeking is an example of why such individuals post fake reviews. False information about products includes fake reviews in e-commerce, hoaxes on collaborative platforms, fake news on social media. The growing trend in the number of published articles per annum indicates the issue’s fast emergence in research. However, most of this research focuses on detection while antecedents and consequences remain largely unexplored.

Detection
Authentic reviews and fake reviews have significant micro-linguistic differences, four constructs, nine characteristics, and three aspects that allow distinguishing authentic reviews from fake reviews. To significantly reduce the effects of fake reviews, review platforms should invest in their detection and methods to reduce the visibility of fake reviews.

Antecedents
The essential reason for manipulating reviews would be pecuniary motivation. Studies confirm that online product reviews affect consumers’ purchase decisions, product reputations, sales volumes, and merchants’ profits. For instance, a 1% increase in hotel review ratings may increase sales per room by approximately 2.6%. An extra half-star rating causes restaurants to sell out 19 percentage points more frequently. Another dominant motivation for posting fake reviews is competition. Fake reviews are mainly posted by firms associated with inferiors, small owners and small management companies, weak brands, low ratings, and inferior quality. Strong brands, high ratings, superior quality, and competitive advantages might also post fake reviews under fierce competition. Finally, individual consumers may post fake reviews to seek rewards; this behavior is broadly rooted in psychological needs that stem from three sources: upset customers, self-appointed brand managers, and social status.

To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explored in detail why and how do individuals, review platforms, and AI agents post fake reviews. In particular, the underlying psychological mechanisms that cause individuals without external financial incentives to post fake reviews should be scrutinized. Moreover, we do not know if fake reviews affect different kinds of products or markets in the same way. Contextualized behavioral research is likely to help understand the effects of situations or the environment on the decision to publish fake reviews. In addition, the motives and the rationales of platforms that post false reviews are also unknown. As a corollary, the types of platforms more prone to post fake reviews would have to be highlighted. The role of AI agents in posting fake reviews remains unclear and calls for analysis and studies.

Consequences
The effects of fake reviews have engendered serious concern and various theoretical models are employed to highlight the consequences of fake reviews. The existence of fake reviews constantly increases the number of online product reviews. Most fake reviews are either positive or negative, whereas few fake reviews are neutral. As a distorted form of online product reviews, fake reviews aggravate the dispersion of review ratings. Fake reviews manipulate consumers’ purchase intentions and should directly affect product sales/revenues. However, no academic consensus emerges. In addition, brand strength, property of the targeted product, market self-exciting power could alleviate the influence of fake reviews on purchase intentions though studies are required to evaluate such moderating effects. Finally, they indicate that fake reviews increase the number of online reviews and aggravate the dispersion of online ratings. However, the influence degrees of fake reviews on the development of online reviews should be quantified and further studies should be undertaken.