Parsing Amazon reviews

Post date: 2022-01-24 21:37:47

How am I supposed to assign credibility and compare products using Amazon reviews?

A product will have 5000 ratings and an average of 4.3 stars. The 1 star reviews will mention the product breaking after a week, getting jammed/stuck, etc. The 5 star reviews will rave about what a pleasure it is to use. I can't tell how long any of the 5 star reviewers have had the product. How reliable is that 4.3 star rating? How does it compare to a 4.7 rating on a product with 300 reviews? What's the difference between a product whose ratings are almost entirely split between 5 and 1, vs one with a spread of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 star votes?

How on earth are people choosing between multiple seemingly very similar products?

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