Discover 2 opportunities in reviews

When the first online reviews of consumer products appeared in the internet, they were often received with mistrust and had little affect on how consumer choices were made in reality. Over the past few years, however, the behavior of users and their interaction with product reviews has changed dramatically, and with rocket speed. According to last year’s research, 90% of respondents who read online reviews prior to a product purchase admitted that their decisions were influenced by positive online reviews, while 86% of respondents indicated that their choice was mostly influenced by negative reviews.

In recent months the INOMICS blog has featured a series of posts about rankings of departments and universities. Traditionally, ranking has practically been an academic discipline in itself, with big names like QS, the Times Newspaper and in Economics the citation listings compiled by REPEC, dominating the field. However a trend towards a kind of “crowd-sourcing” of ranking has started to appear. The Shanghai ARWU was one of the earliest major ranking bodies to introduce this, but others are following.