One Star Reviews

Good discussion of the process of manipulating reviewing on Amazon.  Have seen it a few times when scrolling about reviews Amazon

Amazon's murky world of one-star reviews   By James Clayton in the BBC

Amazon's marketplace is being abused by independent sellers using one-star reviews to harm rivals, the BBC has been told.  Newsnight spoke to a number of those affected who believe their sales have suffered as a consequence.   A consumer rights champion now wants a UK watchdog to investigate further, as part of a probe into fake reviews that is already under way.

Amazon claims to be "relentless" in tackling review manipulation.  Even so, some of those targeted believe it cannot eradicate the problem.  Third-party vendors have sold more physical goods on Amazon's site than the US tech giant itself every year since 2015, according to its own figures. ...."

Amazon Vine Trades Free product for Data

Link contains pointers to other articles mentioned.   I would think that Vine will provide a good platform, especially for new and novel products.  And result in new kinds of curated behavioral data.  Gets back to data as an asset, and can create leveraging metadata in new contexts, adding to asset value. 

Is Amazon Vine a win for all?   by Tom Ryan in Retailwire

Amazon’s secretive, invite-only Amazon Vine program that provides free products to the platform’s “most trusted reviewers” was recently explored by The New York Times.

On its website, Amazon explains that Vine members are sent free product by participating vendors for “new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make informed purchase decisions.” The invitations to join Vine are determined by an individual’s reviewer rank, which is based on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews.

The Time’s article noted that active Vine members can receive more than $100,000 in product a year.

For Amazon, the purpose of the program is to jumpstart reviews for newer products. Despite the free stuff, Vine reviews are perceived as being less tainted because “at least it’s out there in the open” versus fraudulent reviews.  .... " 

Amazon asserts the reviews are “independent opinions” and not modified by Amazon or vendors. Negative reviews don’t impact a reviewer’s ranking or Vine participation. Members are removed for violating guidelines. A green stripe next to the review identifies it as being one from a Vine member. ... " 

Managing Customer Reviews

In HBS Working Knowledge: On the issue of managing customer reviews.  I discover that I have personally started to read more of them and considering them as a group.

Review: Tableau Launches Vizable for Tablet

Tableau has launched a free data visualization capability for the iPad called Vizable.   I loaded it up today and ran through a number of examples. Includes basic visualization forms.  Nicely done, includes the ability to import data, filter variables, plot and to export the results.  No analytics.  No way to save visual models,  just resulting images.  No calculated fields.

Its nowhere near like all of Tableau, but covers basics.    Notably leaves out things like Geo mapping and range filter selection.  Also no advanced formatting of visualizations.   Has impressive multiple column manipulation.  Pinch style editing on tablet.  Sorting and rearrangement of columns. Simple comparison trends.  The export is a fixed  image and non interactive.  Says it will import up to 200K rows and 25 MB  files.  CSV and simply formatted Excel files.  Implies it will only work for later version iPads.  But I got it to work well on an iPad 2 running IOS 9 with small files.

Vizable would be a good thing to point out to students,  to get them used to manipulating files and variables under multiple visualizations.  That's often hard to get used to.  Also being on a tablet is nice for easy interaction and demonstration.  Although for now it is only on one tablet and not on a laptop.   Impressive for free.  See the Vizable community site for more information, getting started, help and hints and social conversations about its use.

Will follow with other review links here.  ....