Bart de Langhe
Consumer researcher who checked whether online star ratings track quality. They do not.
Who they are
de Langhe works on judgment and quantitative reasoning in consumer contexts. The 2016 paper assembled 1,272 products across 120 categories where objective quality could actually be measured, which is what makes it hard to argue with.
Key papers
de Langhe, B., Fernbach, P. M., & Lichtenstein, D. R. (2016). Navigating by the stars: investigating the actual and perceived validity of online user ratings. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 817-833.
Key ideas
Average user ratings lack convergence with Consumer Reports scores, are often based on insufficient sample sizes, do not predict resale prices, and run higher for more expensive products and premium brands at equal measured quality.
Consumers heavily weight the average against other cues including price and the number of ratings.
They fail to moderate reliance on the average as a function of sample size sufficiency, which the authors call an illusion of validity.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1093/jcr/ucv047