Side Effect Of Postive Consumer Reviews - Increased Prices
Every now and then, when I have purchased a product that I have discovered to be excellent, I have written a raving positive, detailed review about it somewhere on the internet. One time, I wrote such a review for a photography product that I bought, and when I returned a few months later to buy another, the price had increased significantly.
Now MY review might not have been the cause of the price increase, of course, but it got me thinking about the effect of positive consumer reviews. I have decided that well written positive product reviews in large numbers can cause a distributor to re-evaluate the quality of what he/she is selling, and if he/she observes many positive reviews, then he/she will raise the price, either because he/she realizes that the product is better than previously judged or because the plethora of positive reviews has increased sales, thus, demand.
As an indicator of how likely this is to happen, I recently discovered a product that I believe is extremely well made. I could NOT, however, find many reviews of it online. I also noticed that the price for this exact same product at different selling sites was over a hundred dollars higher than the lowest price, in some cases, which tells me that some distributors have already figured out that the product is really good, with qualities that will soon be in greater demand for such a product.
This time, I am keeping my review to myself. I have decided never again to publish rave reviews about any high-quality product that I discover.
Because of the speed and efficiency with which information travels now, what once assisted consumers can now come back and bite them in the bank account.