Amazon Average Product Rating?

[microchip]

I seem to recall that there was a study conducted on Amazon's rating averages, basically stating the average rating was 3.5 and more people tended to praise products.

I did some searching but it's difficult to narrow down the terms.
Was there some research conducted, or am I just wrong?

TiA!

[Mini 9]

I would have thought 4 out of 5.

[anonymouse1]

I never look at average ratings--I look at how many ratings there are, and what percentage are 1 star or 2 star. That helps eliminate the obvious losers.

[Ombligo]

I look at the overall curve of the ratings and read a few to see what the strengths/weaknesses are. Quite often low eatings are from people who got a wrong shipment and are mad at Amazon, not the item. Likewise high ratings are fro m people who got it yesterday and think it is the best thing since sliced bread (which isn't that great anyway). Both can be discounted.

However when something has 400+ ratings and averages 4+ stars, thats a good indicator.

[rjmacs]

Good info, folks - but not really what 'chip was asking for.

Try looking for:

Jahna Otterbacher. Managing information in online product review communities: a comparison of two approaches. In Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2008). Galway, Ireland, June 2008.

or

Vassilis Kostakos. Is the crowd's wisdom biased? A quantitative analysis of three online communities. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Social Intelligence and Networking (SIN09). Vancouver, Canada, August 2009.

Sorry i don't have direct links for these. I do research for work, and symposium proceedings can be a pain to get a hold of. Sometimes best to contact the author directly. Good luck!

[Buck]

I bet there are many seminar posters praising the items. It's a good practice to read the details of the 1 and 2 star reviews. Many times people report the same negative issue:, such as:
"Nice to have the capacity, but this USB drive is dog slow. I end up using my 1GB so I can get some work done."

[microchip]

rjmacs, thanks, those look more inline with what I'm after.

I'll take a look at them when I feel like VPNing to my University in the morning. Thanks!