The New Boutique Economy
What the end of the Ratings Era means for retail
This post is a continuation of my Amazon Series.
Thanks to the universal corruption of rating systems, we’re seeing a new opportunity for products that are designed to side-step the review system altogether. It used to be that you could blindly rely on reviews on Amazon. I used to purchase any four-star, well-reviewed item on Amazon and be happy. Now I’m frequently disappointed. It appears that merchants have thoroughly gamed the system. I started noticing that electronics that were meant primarily as gifts would only work for a few days, long enough for you to see the glee in a recipient’s face, but not long enough to follow up and see if they were still using it. Other electronics would last about thirty days, long enough to be forgotten and therefore unreviewed and non-refundable. Easily bought and easily forgotten: that appears to be the sweet spot for the new luxe that is Amazon’s four-star products.
At first, I simply tweaked my criteria. For certain categories, I would only insta-buy products that had a certain threshold of reviews. This technique was meant to combat the problem of fake reviews. Initially, the threshold was 45 or so reviews. Then it became 100. Now, I can’t even trust items that have 1,000-plus reviews. I now have to comb through reviews and run…
